Abstract
Myxomatous mitral valve disease (MMVD) is characterized by thickening of the valve leaflets and omega-3 (ω-3) supplementation has been associated with modulation of blood pressure (BP) and heart rate, improvement of doppler echocardiographic indices, antiarrhythmic, anti-inflammatory and anti-dislipidemic effects in dogs and humans, although prospective studies of it single use are still absent in the veterinary literature. The objective of this study was to evaluate the influence of ω-3 supplementation in dogs with MMVD. Twenty-nine dogs were followed quarterly for 12 months by clinical evaluation, arterial blood pressure, electrocardiography, doppler echocardiography, thoracic radiography and laboratory tests including inflammatory mediators and cardiac biomarker blood concentrations. The dogs were classified in stages B2 and C, according to the classification proposed by ACVIM 2019. They were randomly assigned to either ω-3 group (ω-3G) or control group (CG). The ingestion of ω-3 reduced the chance of developing arrhythmias by 2.96 times (p = 0.003). The vertebral heart size (VHS) measurements were higher in the control group (p = 0.033). In conclusion, at the dosages used in this study, ω-3 dietary supplementation reduces the volumetric overload, has antiarrhythmic effect and keeps dogs with B2 and C stages of MMVD in milder stages of the disease.
Highlights
Myxomatous mitral valve disease (MMVD) represents 75% of cardiovascular diseases in canine and is recognized as the leading cause of cardio insufficiency and main cause of death in dogs older than eight years of age [1,2]
Dogs had a mean weight of 6.10 ± 2.68 kg and mean body condition score (BCS) of 5.78 ± 2.69 according to the ninepoint scale of Laflamme (1997) [22]
The evaluation of Body condition score (BCS) and muscle mass score (MMS) is important in heart disease patients, since the presence of congestive heart failure (CHF) associated to MMVD changes of inflammatory cytokines (TNF-α, interleukin 1 (IL-1), IL-6, IL-8, chemokines, catecholamines, cortisol and others) induce an inflammatory state and decreases the body’s ability to make metabolic adaptations [18] and use amino acids as a source of energy, causing muscle catabolism that results in the loss of lean mass and the development of cardiac cachexia [4]
Summary
Myxomatous mitral valve disease (MMVD) represents 75% of cardiovascular diseases in canine and is recognized as the leading cause of cardio insufficiency and main cause of death in dogs older than eight years of age [1,2]. MMVD mainly affects the left atrioventricular valve progressively, whose changes can be initially recognized by the presence of cardiac murmur. Omega-3 effects in mitral valve disease the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section
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