# Study on Spay/Neuter, Cancer, and Behavioral issues in vizslas



## einspänner (Sep 8, 2012)

http://www.caninesports.com/uploads/1/5/3/1/15319800/vizsla_javma_study.pdf


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## solefald (May 16, 2013)

This further proves the stupidity of the "it's a responsible thing to do" propaganda.


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## Bob Engelhardt (Feb 14, 2012)

I don't get it. The conclusions don't seem to correspond to the raw data in Table 1 at all.

For example, the incidence in all categories for males neutered before 6 months (MNB6) is less than intact males. Yet they conclude that the MNB6 have much greater odds of having everything. E.g., the incidence of mast cell in MNB6 was .3% & for intact .5%, yet they conclude the odds for MNB6 to be 2.8 times the intact! What???

Is this a case of being an expert allows one to draw conclusions that are obviously not true? Are the experts so dependent upon their software that they can't see the obvious? Or am I just missing something (most likely)?

Bob


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## FLgatorgirl (Mar 11, 2013)

I saw this study last night on Facebook and sent it to Ellie's behaviorist who is also a DVM and is published, lectures, etc. I have asked her in the past about other studies (not breed specific) that have shown a correlation with spay/neuter and increase in behavioral issues. She said the studies were highly flawed and explained why. Hopefully, she will have some time and the inclination to read this new paper specific to Vs and get back to me. We are still paid up for a few months of consult, but I am not sure if this is too far off of her scope of work with Ellie.


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## emilycn (Jul 30, 2013)

Bob (and all), the stats are a bit complicated, but trust me, what they are writing makes sense. unfortunately when you are stuck using logistic regression, you have to interpret the results in terms of the odds ratio, and odds are incredibly unintuitive.


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## Bob Engelhardt (Feb 14, 2012)

Bob said:


> I don't get it. The conclusions don't seem to correspond to the raw data in Table 1 at all.
> 
> For example, the incidence in all categories for males neutered before 6 months (MNB6) is less than intact males. Yet they conclude that the MNB6 have much greater odds of having everything. E.g., the incidence of mast cell in MNB6 was .3% & for intact .5%, yet they conclude the odds for MNB6 to be 2.8 times the intact! What???
> ...


OK - now I get it. The % incidence shown in Table 1 is a percentage of the TOTAL SAMPLE! IOW the 8 MNB6 with mast cell is .3% of the 2500 dogs sampled. This is a completely useless number to a reader!

As a reader, I would be interested in what percentage of MNB6 have mast cell, etc. So, I have recreated Table 1 in this way. It's attached below.

Now things make sense. The 8 MNB6 with mast cell is 5% of all MNB6. And the 13 intact males with mast cell is 2% of all intact males. So the incidence ratio is about 2 1/2 to 1.

HTH,
Bob


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## Bob Engelhardt (Feb 14, 2012)

Bob said:


> ...
> It's attached below.


Sorry that's so hard to read. Here's a link to the pdf version:
home.comcast.net/~bobengelhardt/myfilelocker/Vdata.pdf

Bob


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## Denethor (Apr 2, 2013)

thanks for the study einspänner and thank you for the new table Bob, the raw data didn't make sense to me either. Seiya is almost 11 months now, and we're in the process of deciding if/when he needs to be neutered. Trying to read all data pro/con that is available, so far we haven't reached any conclusions yet.


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