Like 98 dogs before them, Mallie Bartos and Malayla Bartos trotted across the NC State College of Veterinary Medicine campus this week demanding attention before they settled into the consultation room, where Dr. Natasha Olby’s team would examine them and enroll them in her long-term and groundbreaking longitudinal study on aging in dogs.

Given the monumental advancements the study has sparked and continues to generate since it began in 2018, Olby decided to mark the enrollment of dogs No. 99 and 100 with an impromptu celebration. 

“This cohort study is unusual because, by definition, it just keeps going and going,” says Olby, who became the Dr. Kady M. Gjessing and Rahna M. Davidson Distinguished Chair in Gerontology at NC State in 2017. “This study is central to my effort to establish research into aging at NC State and is funded by my chair. It has allowed us to actually try to describe in detail what happens to dogs as they age, as they age well, as they age poorly, however they come.” 

In addition to leading to advancements in understanding, measuring and treating decline in dogs, the work has led to a biobank that researchers in other fields can use for their own exciting work on aging.

“For example, we’re collaborating with Dr. Autumn Harris, whose research is focused on chronic kidney disease in companion animals,” Olby says. “We are just starting a collaboration with Erica Behling-Kelly, associate professor of pathology, in which we are studying lipids and aging.”

On the aging front, the continuing study has helped Olby and Dr. Margaret Gruen, professor of behavioral medicine, to develop ways to quantify changes in cognition, mobility and sensory functions in older dogs and to use the measurements to describe how the nervous system ages in dogs. Their research spanned cognitive testing, sleep quality, postural stability, gait speed, muscle strength and hearing, vision and smell skills among other things.

Developing a suite of complementary tests to quantify changes in a dog’s cognition is an approach that could lead not only to help for owners managing an elderly dog’s decline but also to a model for evaluating cognitive decline in humans with Alzheimer’s disease.

Olby also points out how many veterinary students, research interns, graduate students and post-doctoral researchers have contributed to her lab’s research into aging dogs and taken that knowledge with them. 

Dr. Sherry Rafatpanah, a native of Iran, won a scholarship while a DVM student there to spend six months on sabbatical anywhere in the world. She chose Dr. Olby’s lab and later rejoined two years ago as a post-DVM running the neuro-aging study. In a few weeks, she’s heading to Canada to complete a clinical internship.

“It was my goal to get to 100 before I had to leave,” she says. “These are the 25th and 26th dogs I’ve recruited since I’ve been here. I used to think that I was a small dog person, but I’ve learned through this study that it doesn’t matter what size they are. I love them all. Every one of them has their own personality, their own quirks.”

We spoke with Dr. Olby, a professor of veterinary neurology and neurosurgery, about why the milestone of dog No. 100 was worth noting for her and her team.

Q: What is so special about this study?

Dr. Natasha Olby: It’s not a disease-specific study. It’s truly just looking at the aging process, and it’s allowed us to develop safe and actually fun protocols for testing all kinds of things, like strength, like cognition, like vision, like hearing, everything related to the nervous system. We have partnered that with careful banking of samples for use in the future. The key is that it has allowed us to generate data on what normally happens and to ask what affects the aging trajectory a dog follows. This has then allowed us to design and perform clinical trials. We have three new studies we have just started or are about to start, and none of them would be possible without the groundwork we have done in our longitudinal study.

“These owners are absolutely amazing. No. 1, they fill out many, many questionnaires every 6 months. No. 2, they bring their dogs for three days, sometimes more, every six months.”
— Dr. Natasha Olby

Q: And all of this is possible because of your endowed chair, the largest in the history of NC State University?

Olby: Exactly. It would have been quite hard and time consuming to fund a study like this without the distinguished chair endowment. 

Q: It sounds like this biobank you’ve built with the dogs enrolled in the aging study is just research gold.

Olby: What’s really unique about our biobank is that we see the dogs every 6 months, and we do detailed testing with them and take samples  so we can link each sample to what the dog looked like at that time. It’s one thing to have a sample; it’s quite another to have a sample with very detailed information around it.

Q: How does this fit in with the mission of the Center for Healthy Aging that NC State has launched and you are leading?

Olby: The Center for Healthy Aging has a research arm, and this study, of course, fits under that umbrella beautifully. It checks all the boxes for how you want a center to be able to bring people together and enable research and along with that it provides opportunity for trainees at every level. 

Q: What would you say to all of the owners who have enrolled their dogs and brought them here every six months?

Olby: These owners are absolutely amazing. No. 1, they fill out many, many questionnaires every 6 months, and the data these generate provide critical information on how their dog is doing in the home setting No. 2, they bring their dogs for three days, sometimes more, every six months, and we all know how hard it is to add any complexity to a busy day. We really appreciate them for this. Fortunately, many of their dogs really enjoy coming. They get to play games with treat rewards  and get attention all day. These same owners often take a sidestep into one of our clinical trials and then come back into the cohort study, which is amazing. We’re very grateful to them for sharing their dogs and their personal insights and time with us.