Understanding how metabolic dysfunction affects canine aging

Brennen McKenzie, VMD, MSc, MA, discussed common metabolic changes that are risk factors for disease and declining health in canines, in an interview with dvm360®. A clinical practitioner, he is also director of veterinary medicine for biotechnology company Loyal, which is developing therapies to extend healthy lifespans in canines.

McKenzie was speaking today about metabolic dysfunction and common mechanisms that lead to aging as a presenter at the 2024 Southwest Veterinary Symposium in Fort Dallas, Texas. The talk also addresses interventions that can help prevent health decline in canines.

A partial transcript of the interview is as follows:

Brennen McKenzie, VMD, MSc, MA: So, metabolic dysfunction is one of the ways in which aging makes us more vulnerable to disease and disability and health problems and, ultimately, to mortality. And we think it's a particularly important component of aging because it's modifiable. It's something we might be able to change in order to extend health and lifespan.

The basic components of metabolic dysfunction are changes in insulin sensitivity and the levels of insulin in the blood, changes in adipose tissue—how much of it there is, where it's located, the kind of metabolic functions that it's pursuing, and the impact of that on health. And then changes in blood lipids; things like cholesterol and triglycerides and fatty acids. The last one is particularly interesting, because we tend to ignore those in veterinary medicine, our patients don't get atherosclerosis and don't have, MIs and strokes, the way that humans do.

But it turns out that changes in all 3 of those things, in insulin and adipose tissue and blood lipids, are really important risk factors for disease and for health outcomes in older dogs. So metabolic dysfunction is this aging related change in all 3 of those things, and we've done some interesting research connecting those biomarkers to actual clinical outcomes, which is something that's new.