A study by Sinai Health and the University of Toronto shows that exposure to dogs during childhood is linked to beneficial changes in gut bacteria, gut permeability and blood biomarkers.
The study, published in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, found that living with a dog between the ages of 5 and 15 was associated with a healthier gut microbiome and a reduced risk of developing Crohn’s disease.
The research sheds new light on how environmental factors influence – an inflammatory bowel disease – and could inform future prevention strategies.
For the study, researchers led by Kenneth Croitoru and Williams Turpin of Mount Sinai Hospital’s inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) center investigated how dozens of environmental factors influence the likelihood of developing Crohn’s disease as part of their global effort to to be able to predict people at risk and to potentially intervene in time.
“The idea behind predicting someone’s disease risk is that you can start to understand who should do something to try,” says Croitoru, a clinician-researcher at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute (LTRI), part of Sinai Health.
Croitoru notes that the study doesn’t reveal why living with a dog makes someone less prone to Crohn’s disease.
Beneficial changes in gut bacteria
The study also found that living in a large family in the first year of life reduces the likelihood of developing Crohn’s disease. It was also found that people who lived with a bird at the time of the study were more likely to develop the disease.
Caused by inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract, Crohn’s disease can have profound consequences on your overall health and well-being. The incidence of the disease in children under 10 has doubled since 1995, while the annual cost of inflammatory bowel disease in Canada is estimated at $5.4 billion a year, according to Crohn’s and Colitis Canada, a national NGO.
The probability of Crohn’s disease is strongly influenced by genetics, but the environment also plays an important role, says Croitoru, quoted by . Although we cannot change our genes, we can change our environment and diet, for example, to prevent disease.
Profound consequences for overall health and well-being
Coordinated at Mount Sinai Hospital since 2008, the GEM project collects comprehensive medical and lifestyle data from more than 5,000 healthy first-degree relatives of people with Crohn’s disease from around the world, including Australia, Canada, Israel , New Zealand, UK and USA.
In the 15 years since the study began, more than 120 people “By understanding what is different in those who develop the disease, we should be able to predict who is at risk,” says Croitoru.
Previously, the group identified differences in the microbiome and other biomarkers in people who go on to develop Crohn’s disease and those who do not.
But risk prediction is only the first step, says Croitoru, whose ultimate goal is to be able to intervene and prevent the onset of the disease.
