Pets and their owners have a very special bond, as they are partners in life and habits. Now a new study has found that the bond between dogs and their handlers may also increase the risk of diabetes if either party has developed the disease.
Affirming research, published in the BMJ, has indicated that people caring for a dog with diabetes are up to 38% more likely to develop type 2 diabetes, while the risk of this disease in dogs of owners with diabetes it is 28%.
This has not caught the researchers by surprise, since this link was already discovered in a previous study, but related to being overweight, apparently because dogs tend to have the same lifestyle as the people who care for them, including a sedentary lifestyle . In the current work, 208,980 pairs of owners and dogs and 123,566 pairs of owners and cats have been analyzed, from 2007 to 2012.
This association did not occur in cats.
The results showed that this risk of having diabetes if the dog or the owner are patients with this disease did not occur in the case of cats. The authors’ explanation is that dogs and their owners tend to engage in the same level of physical activity more frequently than humans and their cats.
If a person is sedentary, it is possible that their dog is too, something that does not happen with felines, which tend to leave the house alone or stay active on their own. For all these reasons, the researchers believe that this study could be key to continue learning more about this association and thus reduce the risk of diabetes in both people and their dogs.
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