Human and dog longevity: The Dog Aging Project

 

The dog aging project is a nationally-supported aging study project to thoroughly understand how genes, lifestyle, diet, and environment influence aging in animals, specifically dogs, but for humans as well.

The dog aging project aims to put in place the groundwork and the foundation for a scientific community approach to innovative aging research in dogs. With so many variables underlying aging in dogs, and humans, the dog aging project explores the biology of aging in mammals like mice and dogs including invertebrates like flies and nematodes.

The dog aging project aims to specifically figure out how the interaction of different genes and environments affects the aging of animals outside of lab conditions. It tries to collect and generate in-depth knowledge of the dynamics of aging that could also be easily translated into the study of human aging.

The dog aging project studies companion dogs which are considered by researchers as the ideal animal to study biological aging since dogs have so many biological variables like size, body shape, and behavior, with varying life expectancies and the range of diseases they are prone to encounter.

Due to companion dogs experiencing the same functional decline and disease from aging as humans do, the dog aging project aims to find the best possible healthcare system for age-related diseases and decline that can be applied in parallel to human health care.

Since dogs also share the environment with humans, and they also age more rapidly than humans, the dog aging project enables researchers to gain opportunities for long-term aging studies.  It also allows researchers to collect a more varied range of data from a dog's veterinary medical records, the dog's environmental data, as well as its blood, urine, hair, and feces.

The dog aging project studies companion dogs of all breeds, including mixed breeds, of all ages, sizes, and sexes. It also includes dogs in environments from all geographic regions, from urban and suburban areas, including rural areas.

The conclusions expected from the dog aging project are to have important data that provides veterinarians and researchers with in-depth knowledge on the dynamics of dog aging to assess how each specific dog is biologically aging to correlate its findings in studies on the different factors that can positively and negatively affect normal aging.

With researchers of the dog aging project having already collected the necessary data for canine-specific aging dynamics, including a dog's environmental and lifestyle factors, a biological model of the aging dynamics of dogs can be created using the annual measurement of a dog's physiological status, from its physical measurements to the collection and the analysis of biological specimens.

The wide range of in-depth data garnered through the dog aging project can be expected to reliably generate predictive and prognostic biomarkers in animal aging, and with the data collected, guide researchers to the different causal factors that influence aging in dogs that can be correlated to help develop anti-aging therapies both in dogs and humans. The dog aging project contributes to the practice of veterinary medicine and provides the foundation for an innovative and science-based approach to aging research in dogs.