The way that the disease is initiated has been debated. Although failure of chondrocyte differentiation, formation of a fragile cartilage, failure of blood supply to the growth cartilage, and subchondral bone necrosis all have been proposed as the starting point in the pathogenesis, recent literature strongly supports failure of blood supply to growth cartilage as most likely. Osteochondrosis can be usually inherited. Factors
There are four factors: genetics, environment, diet, and exercise. Environment is found to be a key factor in osteochondrosis occurring. The environment is related to diet and exercise. If the dog has good facilities to live a healthy life, meaning having a good diet and enough and the right kind of exercise, osteochondrosis may never occur even if there would be genetic susceptibility. Sometimes even if the environmental conditions are optimal there is still a chance that osteochondrosis will occur in the animal.Dogs are very susceptible to calcium when they are growing up. Too much calcium in a diet can affect how the bone starts ossifying. Thats one of the reasons why a correct diet for young growing dogs is important. Diagnosis
Classification
In humans, these conditions may be classified into three groups:
Spinal: Scheuermanns disease(of the interspinal joints) which is a curve in the thoracic spine.
Osteochondrosis is a family of orthopedic diseases of the joint that occur in children, adolescents and rapidly growing animals, particularly pigs, horses, dogs, and broiler chickens. They are characterized by interruption of the blood supply of a bone, in particular to the epiphysis, followed by localized bony necrosis, and later, regrowth of the bone. This disorder is defined as a focal disturbance of endochondral ossification and is regarded as having a multifactorial cause, so no one thing accounts for all aspects of this disease.Osteochondrosis is a developmental disease. It usually occurs in an early stage of life. It has personified features as focal chondronecrosis and confinement of growth cartilage due to a failing of endochondral ossification. Fissures can develop from lesions over the top articular cartilage and form a cartilage flap and an osteochondral fragment. It is diagnosed as osteochondritis dissecans. In animals
In dogs osteochondrosis is seen in elbow, shoulder, knee, and ankle joints. Elbow osteochondrosis is also known as "elbow dysplasia". There are three types of elbow dysplasia:  fragmented medial coronoid process, ununited anconeal process and Osteochondritis dissecans of the medial humeral condyle. Breeds that have the predisposition to these are Basset Hound, Labrador, Golden Retriever, and Rottweiler. Other breeds can also be diagnosed with this condition but it is not common.One of the leading factors to some elbow osteochondrosis is that the radius and ulna are growing at different rates.