If you have a dog with diabetes, then there is higher risk that you might also develop the disease. A new study from Sweden and the United Kingdom claimed that owning a dog with diabetes led to a 38 per cent increased risk of type 2 diabetes for the owner.
The study also said that the dogs also have a higher risk of developing diabetes if the owner has type 2 diabetes. They said that the risk was about 28 per cent. Beatrice Kennedy of Uppsala University in Sweden led the team of researchers.
The researchers claimed the dogs and the owners shared the same home and might have the same behavioural risks such as what they eat and how much they exercise.
However, the researchers did not find any relation between cats and human beings in the case of diabetes. The study mainly looked into veterinary insurance data to identify nearly 2,09,000 owner dog pairs, as well as more than 1,23,500 owner cat pairs between 2004 and 2006. The researchers linked the information to Swedish health and drug registers. They looked into several factors such as personal and socioeconomic circumstances of the dog owners. These included age, region of residence, sex, marital status, education level and income of the owners as well as age, sex and breed of the pet.
The researchers had done only an observational study and as such, specific cause could not be determined.
