A Clinical Case from the Archives : 17/10/2008

This poor little Jack Russell seems to have everything wrong with it – a weird neurological gait abnormality, probably Cushings, definite hypercholesterolaemia and now when we look in its eye this! What are we seeing – does it affect vision?

This is asteroid hyalosis – bright stars in a degenerate vitreous. They are composed of calcium hydroxyapatite and lipid and rarely cause a visual problem in people, so we assume the same for dogs! They occur in older individuals and those with diabetes or hyperlipidaemia, which fits with this dog. Have a look at Wang, Kador and Wyman’s recent paper in www.molvis.org/molvis/v12/a30/ for a really nice study of them in galactose fed dogs.