The shared risk of diabetes between dog and cat owners and their pets: register based cohort study

Abstract

Objective To investigate whether dog and cat owners and their pets share a risk of developing diabetes. Design Cohort study. Setting Register based longitudinal study, Sweden. Participants 208 980 owner-dog pairs and 123 566 owner-cat pairs identified during a baseline assessment period (1 January 2004 to 31 December 2006). Main outcome measures Type 2 diabetes events in dog and cat owners and diabetes events in their pets, including date of diagnosis during the follow-up period (1 January 2007 to 31 December 2012). Owners with type 2 diabetes were identified by combining information from the National Patient Register, the Cause of Death Register, and the Swedish Prescribed Drug Register. Information on diabetes in the pets was extracted from veterinary care insurance data. Multi-state models were used to assess the hazard ratios with 95% confidence intervals and to adjust for possible shared risk factors, including personal and socioeconomic circumstances. Results The incidence of type 2 diabetes during follow-up was 7.7 cases per 1000 person years at risk in dog owners and 7.9 cases per 1000 person years at risk in cat owners. The incidence of diabetes in the pets was 1.3 cases per 1000 dog years at risk and 2.2 cases per 1000 cat years at risk. The crude hazard ratio for type 2 diabetes in owners of a dog with diabetes compared with owners of a dog without diabetes was 1.38 (95% confidence interval 1.10 to 1.74), with a multivariable adjusted hazard ratio of 1.32 (1.04 to 1.68). Having an owner with type 2 diabetes was associated with an increased hazard of diabetes in the dog (crude hazard ratio 1.28, 1.01 to 1.63), which was attenuated after adjusting for owner’s age, with the confidence interval crossing the null (1.11, 0.87 to 1.42). No association was found between type 2 diabetes in cat owners and diabetes in their cats (crude hazard ratio 0.99, 0.74 to 1.34, and 1.00, 0.78 to 1.28, respectively). Conclusions Data indicated that owners of a dog with diabetes were more likely to develop type 2 diabetes during follow-up than owners of a dog without diabetes. It is possible that dogs with diabetes could serve as a sentinel for shared diabetogenic health behaviours and environmental exposures.

Is There a Correlation Between Dog Obesity and Human Obesity? Preliminary Findings of Overweight Status Among Dog Owners and Their Dogs

“…Understanding the shared health implications dogs have with their owners may also impact and defined as underweight (<18.5), healthy range (18.5-24.9), and overweight (25-29.9) and obese (>30). † BCS was measured on a scale from 1 (underweight) to 9 (obese) and defined as underweight (1-3), healthy range (4-5), overweight (6-7), and obese (8)(9). owner motivation.…”

“…There are many similarities between dog and human obesity, including clinical consequences of obesity, the needs for nutrition and physical activity behavior change, understanding physical vs. emotional hunger, and the influence of media on food selection (7,8). Risk factors for obesity are also similar between dog owners and their dogs, such as sedentary lifestyles (9).…”

“…Another study done by Delicano et al (9) found an association between owning a dog with a diagnosis of diabetes and type 2 diabetes in the owner among over 200,000 owner-dog pairs in Sweden. The authors hypothesized that shared health behaviors (e.g., physical activity) and shared environmental exposures could explain the correlation (9). Findings such as these have also prompted whether weight status of owners and their pets might impact weight bias among veterinarians.…”

The One Medicine concept: its emergence from history as a systematic approach to re-integrate human and veterinary medicine

“…Diabetes mellitus naturally occurs in cats and dogs [106][107][108], birds e.g. Nanday conure parakeet [109], horses and cattle [110].…”

Studying the heterogeneous pathogenesis of canine diabetes: Observational characterization of an island population

“…However, more studies are still necessary to charaterize this possible model of human T1D, given its heterogeneous pathogenesis (O’Kell et al., 2017). Because of the shared habitat and lifestyle of humans and their companion animals, comparative research on gene–environment interaction could be of particular interest (Delicano et al., 2020; Pöppl et al., 2017). Previous epidemiological studies of cDM have mostly been undertaken in northern European, Australian, Canadian and US dog populations (Ahlgren et al., 2014; Davison et al., 2005; Fall et al., 2007; Fracassi et al., 2004; Guptill et al., 2003; Mattin et al., 2014; Shields et al., 2015; Yoon et al., 2020), with similarities and some differences in terms of incidence and breed, age and sex distributions.…”