Evaluating instruments for assessing healthspan: a multi-center cross-sectional study on health-related quality of life (HRQL) and frailty in the companion dog

Abstract

Developing valid tools that assess key determinants of canine healthspan such as frailty and health-related quality of life (HRQL) is essential to characterizing and understanding aging in dogs. Additionally, because the companion dog is an excellent translational model for humans, such tools can be applied to evaluate gerotherapeutics and investigate mechanisms underlying longevity in both dogs and humans. In this multi-center, cross-sectional study, we investigated the use of a clinical questionnaire (Canine Frailty Index; CFI; Banzato et al., 2019) to assess frailty and an owner assessment tool (VetMetrica HRQL) to evaluate HRQL in 451 adult companion dogs. Results demonstrated validity of the tools by confirming expectations that frailty score increases and HRQL scores deteriorate with age. CFI scores were significantly higher (higher frailty) and HRQL scores significantly lower (worse HRQL) in old dogs (≥ 7 years of age) compared to young dogs (≥ 2 and < 6 years of age). Body size (small < 11.3 kg (25 lbs) or large > 22.7 kg (50 lbs)) was not associated with CFI or total HRQL score. However, older, larger dogs showed faster age-related decline in HRQL scores specific to owner-reported activity and comfort. Findings suggest that the clinician-assessed CFI and owner-reported VetMetrica HRQL are useful tools to evaluate two determinants of healthspan in dogs: the accumulation of frailty and the progressive decline in quality of life. Establishing tools that operationalize the assessment of canine healthspan is critical for the advancement of geroscience and the development of gerotherapeutics that benefit both human and veterinary medicine. Graphical abstract

Differential behavioral aging trajectories according to body size, expected lifespan, and head shape in dogs

“…In other words, dogs weighing over 30 kg may be the most strongly affected by an early-onset physical decline (as suggested in [ 18 ]), and this physical decline and accumulating health problems are the main cause of their age-related behavioral changes, which occur before significant cognitive (neural) decline begins. This hypothesis is indirectly supported by the result of Chen et al [ 59 ] that larger dogs showed faster age-related decline in health-related quality of life scores (especially in activity and comfort) than smaller dogs. Nevertheless, further studies are needed to find direct support for it.…”