When a dog has diabetes, the risk that its owner also has type 2 diabetes is increased by 38% compared to the owner of a non-diabetic dog. This would be explained by an overweight found in the animal and its master, as well as by their respective lack of physical activity.
-1608566545.jpg "Like dog like master, even when it comes to diabetes")
- Owners of diabetic dogs have a 38% chance of being diabetic themselves.
- This would be due to the dog’s lack of physical activity and its overweight, which would reflect the lifestyle of the master.
It is often said that dogs look like their masters. Previous studies have already shown a possible association between excess fatty tissue in dogs and their owners. However, could it be the same with diabetes? This is what we wanted to know from researchers at the universities of Liverpool (UK), Uppsala and the Karolinska Institute (Sweden). The results of their study were published on December 10, 2020 in the British Medical Journal.
Masters and diabetic dogs
According to the researchers’ hypothesis, owners of a diabetic dog are themselves more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than owners of a non-diabetic dog. Using a large cohort study combining the Swedish Veterinary Insurance Registry with the Swedish Population and Health Registries, the researchers were able to cross-check information on pet owners residing in Sweden. The study was based on over 175,000 dog owners and nearly 90,000 cat owners, and animals were also included in the study.
Analyzing the results, the main finding is that compared to owning a non-diabetic dog, owning a diabetic dog is associated with a 38% increased risk of type 2 diabetes. Surprisingly, if this finding applies for dog owners, nothing similar could be found for cats and cat owners. The elevated risk for dog owners has nothing to do with the owners’ age, sex, or socioeconomic status, nor with the age, sex, or breed of the dogs.
A similarity that does not concern cat owners
“Our results indicate that a diabetic dog in the house could signal an increased risk of type 2 diabetes in its owner.says Beatrice Kennedy, postdoctoral researcher in medical epidemiology at Uppsala University. We did not have access to information on household lifestyle behaviors, but we believe the association may be due to common physical activity patterns and possibly also common dietary patterns. as well as a shared risk of adiposity. If shared exercise habits are indeed a key factor, this could explain why we don’t see shared diabetes risk among cat owners and their cats.”
Diabetes in dogs most often targets older animals and females that have not been spayed. In female dogs, diabetes is also linked to being overweight and occurs more often in certain breeds of Swedish hunting dogs. Given that castration is not systematic depending on the country, the risk of diabetes observed in this study may therefore not be applicable to other regions of the world. Note, however, that as with humans, the Canine diabetes generally requires lifelong insulin therapy.
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