IVDD Age of Onset Analysis

Anecdotally, we have been concerned about the number of relatively young Dachshunds being diagnosed with IVDD. We revisited the data from our DachsLife 2021 breed survey and stratified the data into yearly age of onset cohorts. The analysis (from 889 dogs 2012-2021) is shown below.

We removed all years where there were fewer than 20 dogs with IVDD. The data are shown by "Year of IVDD onset" rather than "Year of birth". This includes all the IVDD cases diagnosed in each year (incidence) and the average age of the dog at that point.

This analysis shows that age of onset is not decreasing; there is no evidence that dogs are going down with IVDD at a younger age. A further small survey carried out with our IVDD Facebook Group (155 dogs) also confirmed there has been no reduction in the average age of onset of IVDD,

The following histogram shows that 70% of dogs were first affected between the ages of 4 and 7.