Shiba Inu
Shiba Inus have a cited life expectancy of 14.6 years (McMillan 2024 / VetCompass, n=423, 95% CI 14 to 15.1). No tested variant reaches an allele frequency of one percent among the 2,123 Shiba Inus tested (Donner 2023). That describes the variants tested, not the breed's health. Only 16 dogs stand behind the atlas figures here, so little is known yet.
Also known as Japanese Shiba Inu, Japanese Small Size Dog, Shiba, and Shiba Ken.
Which disease variants turn up in Shiba Inus?
From a panel of 250 Mendelian-disease variants screened in 1,054,293 dogs (Donner et al. 2023), 9 turn up in Shiba Inus 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.
CHRNEwhat this gene does
CHRNE is a gene involved in the communication between nerves and muscles, helping muscles respond properly to signals.
For your dog: If your dog is from a breed known to carry CHRNE variants, it's worth discussing with your vet, especially if you notice muscle weakness or unusual fatigue.
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.
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.
NDRG1what this gene does
NDRG1 is a gene involved in nerve cell function and maintenance, helping keep the nervous system working properly.
For your dog: If your dog is from a breed known to carry NDRG1 variants, it’s worth discussing with your vet, especially if you notice any mobility issues.
RPGRIP1what this gene does
RPGRIP1 is a gene involved in the function of photoreceptor cells in the eye, which help dogs see in different light conditions.
For your dog: If your dog belongs to a breed known to carry RPGRIP1 mutations, it’s worth discussing with your vet to understand the risks and monitor eye health.
SLC7A9what this gene does
SLC7A9 is a gene that helps transport certain amino acids in the kidneys. It plays a role in how the body handles cystine, an amino acid that can form crystals.
For your dog: If your dog is a carrier, it’s worth discussing with your vet to monitor urinary health and catch any issues early.
FAM20Cwhat this gene does
FAM20C is a gene that plays a key role in the mineralization of teeth, helping them develop properly and stay strong.
For your dog: If your dog is from one of these breeds, it's worth mentioning FAM20C to your vet when discussing dental care, but being a carrier doesn't mean your dog will have problems.
Other names
The Shiba Inu is also recorded as Japanese Shiba Inu, Japanese Small Size Dog, Shiba, and Shiba Ken.
Identified as Shiba Inu (VBO:0201220) in the Vertebrate Breed Ontology (Mullen et al. 2025, CC-BY 4.0) · registry IDs FCI 257 · iDog 217.
For researchers Population genetics, disease models and every recorded condition Open the research detail for the Shiba Inu
In the atlas, the Shiba Inu clusters consistently as Shiba Inu (100% of the 16 dogs here).
Only 16 dogs of this breed in the atlas, modestly sampled.
What the atlas genotypes say about Shiba Inu
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=16) 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=16) 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.
Shiba Inus are a natural model for human disease
Because the same genes cause the same conditions across species, the inherited conditions documented in Shiba Inus 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.
- GM1 gangliosidosis type 1, modeled by the breed's Gangliosidosis, GM1 via GLB1, the same underlying biology.
- Duchenne muscular dystrophy, modeled by the breed's Muscular dystrophy, Duchenne type via DMD, the same underlying biology.
- Sandhoff disease, modeled by the breed's Gangliosidosis, GM2, type II (Sandhoff or variant 0) , the same underlying biology.
- OMIM:256450, modeled by the breed's Hyperinsulinemic hypoglycemia , the same underlying biology.
Every condition recorded in the Shiba Inu
Beyond the testable carriers above, OMIA's literature catalogue records 5 genetic conditions in the Shiba Inu, 4 of which have a known human equivalent. This is the documented landscape across all Shiba Inus ever studied, not a prediction for any one dog.
- Gangliosidosis, GM1 Autosomal recessiveHuman equivalent: GM1 gangliosidosis type 1
- Muscular dystrophy, Duchenne type X-linked recessiveHuman equivalent: Duchenne muscular dystrophy
- Gangliosidosis, GM2, type II (Sandhoff or variant 0) Autosomal recessiveHuman equivalent: Sandhoff disease
- Human equivalent: OMIM:256450
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 shiba inu never make it into a database. Add what you know as a Keeper, in your words →
Lived experience, kept beside the science.We have 24 shiba inus. We do not have yours.
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- 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).