New Study Reveals Dogs May Reduce Childhood Diabetes Risk

From helping children with autism to sniffing out and detecting cancer, new research is finding more evidence of the health benefits our canine friends provide.

New Study Finds Dogs May Help Prevent Diabetes in Children

We’ve known for awhile that dogs have great abilities to help us heal and cope with physical and cognitive disabilities. A new study has found that dogs help prevent diabetes in children. The new Finnish study has found that having a dog at home can reduce the chance of developing type 1 diabetes.  A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics finds that contact with dogs during infancy can have an impact on reducing the onset of type 1 diabetes.

3000 children participated in the study. They were all part of a early onset diabetes prevention study. All of the children had a high hereditary risk of developing diabetes. Many animals were used in the study, from cats to horses, but only the children who had contact with dogs before they were 1 year old were found to have a lower risk of developing the disease.

There has been previous research suggesting that contact with dogs during early life can help prevent allergies. Research has found that exposure to dogs prevents airway inflammations. With the new study linking dogs to even more protective effects in health researchers are now expanding the study. These findings still need to be confirmed in other populations.

Other Awesome Health Benefits of Dogs

• Dogs can help children with autism
• Dogs detect prostate cancer with 98% accuracy
• Dogs are learning to detect breast cancer (with their noses)
• Bone cancer vaccine study at UPenn