How diet can impact canine eye health

Is there a link between nutrition and ophthalmology? During this interview with dvm360, Jennifer Sheahan, DVM, DACVO, shared ocular diseases that can be influenced by genetics or diet related. She also shared how certain conditions, like Cushing's disease and diabetes, can be exacerbated by dietary factors.

Below is a partial transcript

Jennifer Sheahan, DVM, DACVO: Probably nutrition influenced ophthalmology condition I see is called corneal lipid dystrophy. So it's on the windshield of your eye, and you get little white circles on the surface, and it's like this sheen, it's circular, [and] it's never painful, okay? I think that's important to know, because the other differential for white lesions on the eye, it has completely different clinical signs, which is called corneal mineral degeneration.

Corneal lipid dystrophy is usually only caused by 3 things on the planet. Okay, so you want to rule out these categories when these pets come in. So the first one is inherited, okay, so there are some known inherited breeds that have this condition, because mommy and daddy had it, so you're likely to have it. So King Charles cavalier Spaniel, the Beagle, the Husky, for example.

Second category for corneal lipid dystrophy, little white plaques on there is called metabolic so you're like, what exactly are those white plaques? You have to explain to the owners, like, oh, it's, you know, my dog is $4000 from Belgium. Like, you know, nothing should be wrong with my dog. And so you have to say, Okay, let's make sure it's not something metabolic. Metabolic means something in your body cannot process the cholesterol in lipids on the surface of your eye, okay, so they're like fat deposits, so why would you have buildup of fat in your body, then that would then distribute onto your cornea is the thought for category 2.