Chow Chow
Chow Chows have a cited life expectancy of 12.1 years (McMillan 2024 / VetCompass, n=940, 95% CI 11.7 to 12.5). The tested variant with the highest allele frequency is Degenerative Myelopathy, at 7.5% among the 643 Chow Chows tested (Donner 2023; gene copies, not dogs), then Cystinuria Type I-A (6.5%) and Chondrodystrophy and Intervertebral Disc Disease Risk (1%). Only 17 dogs stand behind the atlas figures here, so little is known yet.
Also known as Chow and Chowdren.
Which disease variants turn up in Chow Chows?
From a panel of 250 Mendelian-disease variants screened in 1,054,293 dogs (Donner et al. 2023), 10 turn up in Chow Chows 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.
FGF4what this gene does
FGF4 influences leg length by affecting bone growth, leading to shorter legs in certain breeds.
For your dog: If your dog is from a breed known to carry this gene, it's worth discussing spinal health with your vet, but being a carrier doesn’t guarantee problems.
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.
SLC3A1what this gene does
SLC3A1 is a gene that helps transport certain amino acids in the kidneys. It plays a key role in preventing the buildup of cystine, which can form stones.
For your dog: If your dog is from a breed known to carry SLC3A1 variants, it’s worth discussing cystinuria risks with your vet, especially if urinary issues arise.
NHEJ1what this gene does
NHEJ1 is a gene involved in repairing breaks in DNA, helping maintain the integrity of genetic information in cells.
For your dog: If your dog belongs to one of the breeds known to carry this gene variant, it's worth discussing testing with your vet to understand any potential eye health risks.
ABCB1what this gene does
ABCB1 is a gene that helps control how certain drugs are processed and cleared from a dog's body.
For your dog: If your dog is from a breed that carries this gene variant, ask your vet about medication sensitivities before giving any new drugs.
F7what this gene does
The F7 gene helps produce a protein important for blood clotting, which stops bleeding when dogs get injured.
For your dog: If your dog is from a breed known to carry F7 variants, it's worth mentioning to your vet before any surgery or if you notice unusual bleeding.
MTBPwhat this gene does
MTBP is a gene involved in regulating inflammation in the body. It helps control how the immune system responds to triggers.
For your dog: If your dog is from a breed known to carry MTBP variants, it's worth discussing with your vet whether genetic testing or monitoring for inflammation-related issues makes sense.
PRCDwhat this gene does
PRCD is a gene involved in the health of a dog's retina, the part of the eye that detects light and helps with vision.
For your dog: If your dog belongs to a breed known to carry PRCD changes, it's worth discussing eye health and potential genetic testing with your vet.
What these results mean for a Chow Chow
About 1 in every 100 copies of this gene in the 638 Chow Chows tested carry this change (Donner 2023).
- Extra copies of a growth gene called FGF4 shape a dog's legs and back. The copy on chromosome 12 is the one linked to disc disease. The copy on chromosome 18 makes legs shorter.
OMIA 000157-9615
“Two FGF4 retrogenes (FGF4L1 on chromosome 18 and FGF4L2 on chromosome 12) have been identified to cause dwarfism across many dog breeds.” OMIA 000157-9615
“Brown et al. (2017) reported that an FGF4 retrogene insertion in chromosome CFA12” OMIA 000157-9615
- Carrying it raises the risk, but it can't tell you which dog will have a disc problem. In Dachshunds, researchers found the test on its own isn't a reliable guide.
OMIA 000157-9615
“the FGF4 retrogene insertion on CFA12 is not a valid risk indicator on its own” OMIA 000157-9615
What to do
Ask your vet what the result means for your dog. The sources here don't say what lowers the risk for a dog that carries it.
Not tested, or a mix
Without a test, no one can tell. Short legs don't tell you either: the disc copy and the short-leg copy are different.
About 8 in every 100 copies of this gene in the 643 Chow Chows 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.
About 6 in every 100 copies of this gene in the 643 Chow Chows tested carry this change (Donner 2023).
- The kidneys can't hold on to cystine, one of the building blocks of protein. It can form crystals and stones that block the flow of urine.
OMIA 000256-9615
“Cystinuria, type 1 - A is an inherited defect that causes failure of reabsorption of cystine in the proximal renal tubule, leading to cystine precipitation in the urine. Formation of crystals and calculi lead to urolithiasis and urinary tract obstruction.” OMIA 000256-9615
What to do
If your dog is straining to pee, or passing little or none, see a vet the same day.
Not tested, or a mix
Without a test, no one can tell how many copies your dog has.
Other names
The Chow Chow is also recorded as Chow and Chowdren.
Identified as Chow Chow (VBO:0200361) in the Vertebrate Breed Ontology (Mullen et al. 2025, CC-BY 4.0) · registry IDs FCI 205 · iDog 75 · VeNom 13876.
For researchers Population genetics, disease models and every recorded condition Open the research detail for the Chow Chow
In the atlas, the Chow Chow clusters consistently as Chow Chow (100% of the 17 dogs here).
Only 17 dogs of this breed in the atlas, modestly sampled.
What the atlas genotypes say about Chow Chow
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.
Not enough dogs in the atlas yet (n=17) for a reliable diversity figure. It fills in as more are added.
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.
Not enough dogs in the atlas yet (n=17) to resolve cluster structure. It fills in as more are added.
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.
What does typical lifespan mean?
The median age dogs of the breed tend to reach.
How to read it: Higher = longer-lived. Compare to longevity-for-size to see whether it's just a size effect.
Drawn from population lifespan records; individual dogs vary widely with care, genetics, and luck.
Chow Chows are a natural model for human disease
Because the same genes cause the same conditions across species, the inherited conditions documented in Chow Chows 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.
- hemophilia B, modeled by the breed's Haemophilia B via F9, the same underlying biology.
- myotonia congenita, autosomal recessive, modeled by the breed's Myotonia via CLCN1, the same underlying biology.
- osteogenesis imperfecta type 2, modeled by the breed's Osteogenesis imperfecta, COL1A2-related via COL1A2, the same underlying biology.
- OMIM:244400, modeled by the breed's Ciliary dyskinesia, primary, generic , the same underlying biology.
- Griscelli syndrome type 3, modeled by the breed's Coat colour, dilution, MLPH-related , the same underlying biology.
Every condition recorded in the Chow Chow
Beyond the testable carriers above, OMIA's literature catalogue records 7 genetic conditions in the Chow Chow, 5 of which have a known human equivalent. This is the documented landscape across all Chow Chows ever studied, not a prediction for any one dog.
- Haemophilia B X-linked recessiveHuman equivalent: hemophilia B
- Myotonia Autosomal recessiveHuman equivalent: myotonia congenita, autosomal recessive
- Osteogenesis imperfecta, COL1A2-related Autosomal dominantHuman equivalent: osteogenesis imperfecta type 2
- Human equivalent: OMIM:244400
- Coat colour, dilution, MLPH-related Autosomal recessiveHuman equivalent: Griscelli syndrome type 3
- Carcinoma, gastric, susceptibility to Multifactorial
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 chow chow never make it into a database. Add what you know as a Keeper, in your words →
Lived experience, kept beside the science.We have 28 chow chows. We do not have yours.
We can already place this breed on the atlas. We hold genetic diversity for n=17 of this breed in the atlas. Our floor for showing a cited rate is n=20. That is 3 more of this breed in our atlas, not in a published study.
Adding your dog is 1 of those 3 in the Sniff atlas cohort. Adding them is free and permanent.
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).