Borzoi
The tested variant with the highest allele frequency is Bald Thigh Syndrome, at 100% among the 24 Borzois tested (Donner 2023; gene copies, not dogs), then Degenerative Myelopathy (14%). 22 dogs stand behind the atlas figures here, so treat this page as an early sketch.
Also known as Barzoi, Russian Hunting Sighthound, Russian Wolfhound, and Russkaya Psovaya Borzaya.
Which disease variants turn up in Borzois?
From a panel of 250 Mendelian-disease variants screened in 1,054,293 dogs (Donner et al. 2023), 2 turn up in Borzois at observable frequency. The figure beside each is its allele frequency. Of the gene copies tested in this breed, the share that carry the variant. Every dog carries two copies, so this is not the share of dogs. It is not clinical risk. Most recessive variants require two copies for disease expression; many dominant variants show incomplete penetrance. Read this as a population fingerprint of what's in the gene pool, not a per-dog prediction.
IGFBP5what this gene does
IGFBP5 is a gene that helps regulate growth factors involved in tissue development and repair.
For your dog: If you have a sighthound, it’s worth mentioning IGFBP5-related risks to your vet, but being a carrier doesn’t mean your dog will develop the syndrome.
SOD1what this gene does
SOD1 is a gene that helps protect cells from damage caused by harmful molecules called free radicals.
For your dog: If your dog is a carrier of SOD1 variants, it's worth discussing with your vet, but remember carrier status doesn't mean your dog will get the disease.
What these results mean for a Borzoi
About 14 in every 100 copies of this gene in the 40 Borzois tested carry this change (Donner 2023).
- DM slowly damages the spinal cord in adult dogs, until the back legs stop working. Nothing yet can stop it.
OMIA 000263-9615
“This is an adult onset degeneration of the spinal cord that progresses to paraplegia and tetraparesis. There is no successful treatment. A genetic test is available.” OMIA 000263-9615
- Two copies of the SOD1 gene change mean a dog is at risk, not that it will get sick. Some dogs with two copies never do.
OMIA 000263-9615
“some homozygous mutant dogs had no signs of degenerative myelopathy, which suggests incomplete penetrance or other causative loci” OMIA 000263-9615
- One copy makes a dog a carrier. In the study that found this change, every dog with DM that was tested had two copies.
OMIA 000263-9615
“All affected dogs tested were homozygous mutant.” OMIA 000263-9615
What to do
A DNA result isn't a diagnosis. If the way your dog walks changes, take that and the result to your vet.
Not tested, or a mix
Without a test, no one can tell how many copies your dog has. How common it is in a breed says nothing about one dog.
Other names
The Borzoi is also recorded as Barzoi, Russian Hunting Sighthound, Russian Wolfhound, and Russkaya Psovaya Borzaya.
Identified as Borzoi (VBO:0200197) in the Vertebrate Breed Ontology (Mullen et al. 2025, CC-BY 4.0) · registry IDs FCI 193 · iDog 45 · VeNom 22645.
For researchers Population genetics, disease models and every recorded condition Open the research detail for the Borzoi
In the atlas, the Borzoi clusters consistently as Borzoi (100% of the 22 dogs here). Genetic diversity is high (mean heterozygosity 0.3227), reflecting either a mixed-breed cluster or breeds with broad genetic backgrounds. Dogs here sit in a relatively sparse region of the atlas, fewer close neighbors than typical.
Mean heterozygosity is 0.323, notably high, which indicates a broad genetic background. Only 22 dogs of this breed in the atlas, modestly sampled.
What the atlas genotypes say about Borzoi
Computed from the 14,478 CanVAS dogs in the Atlas, on an imputed genotype backbone: 77,215 directly typed sites per dog, imputed to 9.67 million variants.
The confidence below counts dogs, not reads: it is the size of the sample, and it is separate from how the genotypes were measured.
What does genetic diversity mean?
How varied a breed's gene pool is — the share of gene spots where a typical dog of the breed carries two different versions rather than two identical ones.
How to read it: Higher = more diverse. Among well-sampled breeds it ranges roughly 0.22 (least diverse) to 0.33 (most diverse).
Diversity is a strength, not a verdict on any individual dog. Lower diversity means it's worth paying attention to recessive-risk testing — not that a dog is doomed.
What does within-breed variation mean?
How much individual dogs within the breed differ from each other genetically.
How to read it: Higher = more internal variety among individuals of the breed.
Sensitive to how many dogs of the breed we've sampled.
Borzois are a natural model for human disease
Because the same genes cause the same conditions across species, the inherited conditions documented in Borzois help researchers understand, and work toward treating, the human diseases they model. This is the dog advancing human medicine. The breed models the human disease; it does not have it, and this is not a prediction for your dog.
- amyotrophic lateral sclerosis type 1, modeled by the breed's Degenerative myelopathy via SOD1, the same underlying biology.
- dilated cardiomyopathy 1A, modeled by the breed's Cardiomyopathy, dilated , the same underlying biology.
- methemoglobinemia due to deficiency of methemoglobin reductase, modeled by the breed's Methaemoglobinaemia, CYB5R3-related , the same underlying biology.
- OMIM:157700, modeled by the breed's Myxomatous valvular degeneration , the same underlying biology.
- OMIM:224700, modeled by the breed's Tricuspid valve dysplasia , the same underlying biology.
Every condition recorded in the Borzoi
Beyond the testable carriers above, OMIA's literature catalogue records 6 genetic conditions in the Borzoi, 5 of which have a known human equivalent. This is the documented landscape across all Borzois ever studied, not a prediction for any one dog.
- Degenerative myelopathy Autosomal recessiveHuman equivalent: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis type 1
- Cardiomyopathy, dilated Multifactorial (OMIA); Autosomal dominant (Incomplete penetrance) (Donner 2023)Human equivalent: dilated cardiomyopathy 1A
- Methaemoglobinaemia, CYB5R3-related Autosomal recessiveHuman equivalent: methemoglobinemia due to deficiency of methemoglobin reductase
- Myxomatous valvular degeneration MultifactorialHuman equivalent: OMIM:157700
- Tricuspid valve dysplasia Autosomal recessiveHuman equivalent: OMIM:224700
Where every number on this page came from.
This page draws on three primary data sources. Allele frequencies for the Mendelian section come from Donner et al. 2023 (CC-BY-4.0). We grade these data at evidence Limited because the cohort is a direct-to-consumer ascertainment, which biases toward owners who chose to test their dogs. The panel also uses tag-SNP proxies for some variants rather than direct causal-variant assays. Limited is a study-design grade, not a quality grade: the Donner cohort is the largest open canine-genotype dataset in existence and we are grateful for it. We rate the confounding MEDIUM.
Population-genetic dimensions (heterozygosity, intra-breed PCA distance, nearest neighbors, trait-locus frequencies) come from CanVAS (Brundage 2026), harmonized through the Sniff Atlas. The exact release date and verification commit are pinned at the bottom of the page so a researcher can trace a number back to a specific snapshot. The disease-gene-variant graph comes from OMIA (Online Mendelian Inheritance in Animals; Nicholas, Tammen, and the Sydney Informatics Hub at the Sydney School of Veterinary Science, The University of Sydney; retrieved April 2026, DOI 10.25910/2AMR-PV70).
What this page does not yet have. Inheritance modes and per-disease penetrance evidence from Donner 2023 are in the structured data for every variant the panel covers. Mondo, OMIM, Ensembl, and HGNC cross-references live on the gene and disease pages this page links to, rather than being repeated here. What is still absent from this breed page is anything not in the cited panel, and each such gap carries its cause where it appears.
How to cite this page. The computed dimensions on this page are derived from the open Sniff Atlas v1.0.2 (Gehring 2026, doi:10.5281/zenodo.20566358, CC-BY 4.0). Full citation formats including BibTeX, RIS, and CITATION.cff at sniff.world/cite.
Some things about living with a borzoi never make it into a database. Add what you know as a Keeper, in your words →
Lived experience, kept beside the science.We have 23 borzois. We do not have yours.
Every borzoi added sharpens the breed's genetic neighborhood. Enrollment is free. The data stays open. The star is permanent.
- Donner J, Freyer J, Davison S, Anderson H, Blades M, Honkanen L, et al. (2023). Genetic prevalence and clinical relevance of canine Mendelian disease variants in over one million dogs. PLOS Genetics 19(2):e1010651. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1010651
- Brundage DM (2026). CanVAS: A Harmonized and Imputed Canine Variant Atlas. bioRxiv. doi:10.64898/2026.04.13.718238
- Nicholas, F.W., Tammen, I., & Sydney Informatics Hub. (2026). Online Mendelian Inheritance in Animals (OMIA) [dataset]. The University of Sydney. https://omia.org. doi:10.25910/2AMR-PV70 (retrieved April 2026).