Surprising Bloat Prevention Findings

After I heard about a nasty disease that could kill me, I decided to listen very carefully to everything my people said about it. The disease is "Bloat" or Gastric-Dilatation-Volvulus syndrome (GDV). It can be a serious killer of large and giant breed dogs. After I heard my partner say that there were some new findings on prevention of GDV coming out of Purdue University's veterinary school, I made sure I found out what they were all about. Some of the findings were opposite to what I had originally learned. Here is the summary:

"Dietary Risk Factors for Gastric Dilatation-Volvulus (Bloat) in 11 Large and Giant Dog Breeds" http://www.vet.purdue.edu/epi/dietrisk.htm

(1) Having a raised food bowl increases the risk of bloat (GDV). This is opposite to what most people have thought in the past.
(2) If the dry food has fat listed in the first 4 ingredients, the risk of bloat is increased. In fact, one-third of all cases of bloat in this study could be attributed to feeding dry foods containing fat among their first 4 ingredients.
(3) The risk of bloat is increased dramatically if the dry food fed contained citric acid and was also moistened prior to feeding. Almost one-third of all cases in this study could be attributed to this.
(4) Dry foods containing a rendered meat meal with bone among the first four ingredients significantly decreased GDV risk.

Wow....This is pretty dramatic. My partner has told me that she has seen a lot of bloat cases in her life. If caught early, surgery can be very successful, but the studies on prevention have not been terribly helpful in the past.

Here is a list of articles about GDV: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&DbFrom=pubmed&Cmd=Link&LinkName=pubmed_pubmed&LinkReadableName=Related%20Articles&IdsFromResult=15683769&ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DiscoveryPanel.Pubmed_Discovery_RA