In North Carolina, a very special laboratory is studying senior dogs and hoping to gain further insight into the aging process, for both pups and people.
Natasha Olby is a professor of neurology and the Dr. Kady M. Gjessing and Rahna M. Davidson Distinguished Chair of Gerontology at NC State University. Dr. Olby works in the school’s College of Veterinary Medicine, studying how dogs age.
Particularly, Dr. Olby is interested in studying neurodegenerative diseases and their effects on dog nervous systems.
Surprisingly, NC State is the only veterinary school in the country that includes geriatric medicine in its curriculum. However, as both dog and human lifespans increase, the need to study how we both age is becoming more pertinent.
Studying Senior Dogs to Help Senior Humans
According to Dr. Olby, “One of the big challenges to modern society is to maintain health span as well as lifespan.”
Olby goes on to say, “Now, with improved health care for pets, dogs are surviving for longer and we come across the exact same challenge [as we do with people]. I think it’s critically important that we don’t say, ‘They’re just getting old,’ but we pay due attention to the process, understand which things we can alter within the process and advance our understanding of aging, in general.”
As a professor, Olby works with senior dogs living at home with their parents. This means that the dogs she studies are in the same environment as their human counterparts; eating the same food, breathing the same air, and living similar lifestyles.
Olby began her research in 2018. Since then, she’s always taken care to ensure her work is humane and treats the dogs with respect. According to a recent profile of her work, “[Olby] wanted to find ways to quantify changes that can be observed in dogs as they age, such as mobility, postural stability, cognitive performance, vision, hearing, and sense of smell.”
The Road Ahead for Geriatric Medicine
Notably, Olby says that an unexpected result of her work is a newfound appreciation for dog parents. Since dogs can’t speak for themselves, Olby relies on their parents to fill out surveys about their well-being and condition. Olby says having a caring dog parent as a proxy does invite some challenges, but overall it motivates her research even further.
Thankfully, many of Olby’s studies have uncovered important information that directly translates to clinical trials for humans. While ensuring that the dogs are being treated with the best care, Olby’s work has helped spur the development of different treatments and therapies for humans suffering from a myriad of degenerative diseases and disorders. We’re excited to see what other new discoveries Olby and her team of researchers uncover.
