Abstract
This paper addresses the use of cohort studies in canine medicine to date and highlights the benefits of wider use of such studies in the future. Uniquely amongst observational studies, cohort studies offer the investigator an opportunity to assess the temporal relationship between hypothesised risk factors and diseases. In human medicine cohort studies were initially used to investigate specific exposures but there has been a movement in recent years to more broadly assess the impact of complex lifestyles on morbidity and mortality. Such studies do not focus on narrow prior hypotheses but rather generate new theories about the impact of environmental and genetic risk factors on disease. Unfortunately cohort studies are expensive both in terms of initial investment and on-going costs. There is inevitably a delay between set up and the reporting of meaningful results. Expense and time constraints are likely why this study design has been used sparingly in the field of canine health studies. Despite their rather limited numbers, canine cohort studies have made a valuable contribution to the understanding of dog health, in areas such as the dynamics of infectious disease. Individual exposures such as neutering and dietary restriction have also been directly investigated. More recently, following the trend in human health, large cohort studies have been set up to assess the wider impact of dog lifestyle on their health. Such studies have the potential to develop and test hypotheses and stimulate new theories regarding the maintenance of life-long health in canine populations.
Highlights
Understanding the factors relating to disease in a population is important for anticipating and dealing with health care needs
Cohort studies, where individuals are tracked through time, solve this problem as investigators can assess whether risk factor exposures are followed by outcomes in individuals
In this review we will discuss studies found in broader medical literature before describing the types of canine cohort studies reported to date
Summary
Understanding the factors relating to disease in a population is important for anticipating and dealing with health care needs. Retrospective methods Retrospective cohort studies involve looking back at individuals after the events of interest have occurred (for example disease incidence, death or pregnancy) and the follow-up period has ended [21] These studies can be undertaken on a large scale with relatively little lead time or up-front costs by using pre-existing databases such as those maintained by insurance companies and groups of secondary veterinary hospitals or primary clinics. The collection of genetic information in particular adds a new element to the traditional cohort study, and with such a large cohort the potential power to detect risk factors involving genetic-environmental interactions is enormous Projects on such a scale are currently financially prohibitive in dogs, but projects on a smaller scale such as Dogslife [61] have collected buccal swabs for DNA extraction from a subset of their cohort enabling comparisons of genotype with phenotype. The merging of lifestyle and whole genome data should increasingly reveal associations between genotype and environment in the dog and in humans as well
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