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. 2017 Nov 17;7(1):15821.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-16118-6.

Dog ownership and the risk of cardiovascular disease and death - a nationwide cohort study

Mwenya Mubanga  1 , Liisa Byberg  2 , Christoph Nowak  1   3 , Agneta Egenvall  4 , Patrik K Magnusson  5 , Erik Ingelsson  1   6 , Tove Fall  7
Affiliations

Dog ownership and the risk of cardiovascular disease and death - a nationwide cohort study

Mwenya Mubanga et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

Dogs may be beneficial in reducing cardiovascular risk in their owners by providing social support and motivation for physical activity. We aimed to investigate the association of dog ownership with incident cardiovascular disease (CVD) and death in a register-based prospective nation-wide cohort (n = 3,432,153) with up to 12 years of follow-up. Self-reported health and lifestyle habits were available for 34,202 participants in the Swedish Twin Register. Time-to-event analyses with time-updated covariates were used to calculate hazard ratios (HR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI). In single- and multiple-person households, dog ownership (13.1%) was associated with lower risk of death, HR 0.67 (95% CI, 0.65-0.69) and 0.89 (0.87-0.91), respectively; and CVD death, HR 0.64 (0.59-0.70), and 0.85 (0.81-0.90), respectively. In single-person households, dog ownership was inversely associated with cardiovascular outcomes (HR composite CVD 0.92, 95% CI, 0.89-0.94). Ownership of hunting breed dogs was associated with lowest risk of CVD. Further analysis in the Twin Register could not replicate the reduced risk of CVD or death but also gave no indication of confounding by disability, comorbidities or lifestyle factors. In conclusion, dog ownership appears to be associated with lower risk of CVD in single-person households and lower mortality in the general population.

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Conflict of interest statement

T.F. received funding from the Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning (FORMAS), grant number 2013-1673 and from the Agria and SKK Research Foundation and the Göran Gustafsson foundation. The funders were not involved in any part of the study design, data collection, analysis manuscript preparation or approval. E.I. is a scientific advisor for Precision Wellness and Olink Proteomics for work unrelated to the present project. The authors report that no other competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Hazard ratios (HR) and confidence intervals (CI) of the associations between dog ownership and CVD outcomes in the National cohort stratified by household type, sex, and age using Cox proportional hazards regression with attained age as time-scale.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Association of dog ownership with cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality in the Swedish Twin Register following adjustments and exclusions in sensitivity analysis using Cox proportional hazards regression with attained age as time-scale. The “National cohort model” was adjusted for sex, marital status, type of family, area of residence, education level, population density and occupation level.
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