So hello and welcome back to this Small Animal Clinical Podcast series brought to you from the Royal Veterinary College in London.

My name is Shaylan Gisani.

Today on the podcast we're going to do something a little bit different by discussing a syndrome that has been reported in a number of dogs in the United Kingdom, mostly in England, starting around the end of 2012.

And today's date, by the way, is the 14th of April 2014.

So this syndrome has been coined New Forest Syndrome by some people, because many of the

earliest cases were in dogs that had been walked in the New Forest area in Hampshire.

But people are now increasingly

referring to it as Alabama rot. So to discuss this with me today, it's my great pleasure

to welcome back to the podcast, Dr. Roseanne Jepson. Rosanne, you will remember, is a diplomat

of the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine and a lecturer in internal medicine at the RVC's Queen Mother Hospital for Animals.

She is also part of the renal replacement therapy or dialysis team at the QMHA.

So thanks very much, Roseanne, for agreeing to take part in this podcast and especially at such short notice.

And you now officially are the most frequent expert on this podcast series without a doubt.

So thank you very much.

So, Rosanne, I thought we would start by explaining to the listeners what Alabama rot is.

And then we'll go on and explain why it has become talked about more recently

in the United Kingdom especially in the UK Alabama rot is something that I guess people may

kind of remember featuring on a differential diagnosis list back in vet school but probably wouldn't

have given it much thought after that because to be honest it was not something that was thought to occur in the UK.

And, you know, I guess the same applies to me, too, that until this recent phenomenon has emerged,

I wouldn't have given another thought to Alabama rights.

So could you please explain a bit about what it is, where it's mostly been seen and whether we know what the cause is?

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