Hokkaido Inu
Only 4 Hokkaido Inus have been tested for disease variants (Donner 2023), too few to say which variants the breed has.
Which disease variants turn up in Hokkaido Inus?
From a panel of 250 Mendelian-disease variants screened in 1,054,293 dogs (Donner et al. 2023), one turns up in Hokkaido 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.
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.
For researchers Population genetics, disease models and every recorded condition Open the research detail for the Hokkaido Inu
Where every number on this page came from.
This page draws on one primary data source. Allele frequencies and sample sizes come from Donner et al. 2023 (CC-BY-4.0), a direct-to-consumer screening cohort, graded Limited as a study design because the dogs were tested at their owners' choice. No genotyped research dogs of this breed are in the three open releases the atlas reads, so the population-genetic sections other breed pages carry are absent here for that reason, not hidden. Conditions recorded for the breed come from OMIA.
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. Cite Donner et al. 2023 (doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1010651) for every frequency on this page, and OMIA for each condition, with the sample size shown beside the figure.
Some things about living with a hokkaido inu never make it into a database. Add what you know as a Keeper, in your words →
Lived experience, kept beside the science.No hokkaido inus are in the atlas yet. Yours would be the first star for the breed.
Every hokkaido inu 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).