Medical Oddities: Dogs share our mortality markers

The bond with dogs runs deeper, the brain enjoys a good sweat, love on screen gets real, and tea carries a little more weight.

To examine the association between plasma metabolites in dogs and all-cause mortality.

Study Design: A longitudinal analysis from the Dog Aging Project involving 937 companion dogs.
Metabolite Analysis: 133 plasma metabolites were analyzed, adjusting for age, sex, weight, creatinine, and genetic relatedness.
Follow-Up: Average follow-up duration was 2.6 years, with 104 dogs dying during this period.
Comparison with Human Studies: Mortality associations for overlapping metabolites were compared with 5 independent human studies.

17% of metabolites were associated with all-cause mortality in dogs.
23 metabolites met the statistical significance threshold.
64% agreement in mortality associations for overlapping metabolites between dogs and humans.
Higher levels of pseudouridine, N2, N2-dimethylguanosine, and homocitrulline, and lower levels of deoxycarnitine and homoarginine were linked to mortality in both species.