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Molecular Biomarkers of Adult Human and Dog Stress during Canine-Assisted Interventions: A Systematic Scoping Review

SIMPLE SUMMARY: Interactions between people and dogs may lower participants’ stress levels. However, this is a fairly new area of research and there has not been a review of what we know across studies. We examined the existing research and found that human–dog interactions consistently improve some...

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Autores principales: Gandenberger, Jaci, Flynn, Erin, Moratto, Em, Wendt, Ashley, Morris, Kevin N.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8909518/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35268219
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ani12050651
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author Gandenberger, Jaci
Flynn, Erin
Moratto, Em
Wendt, Ashley
Morris, Kevin N.
author_facet Gandenberger, Jaci
Flynn, Erin
Moratto, Em
Wendt, Ashley
Morris, Kevin N.
author_sort Gandenberger, Jaci
collection PubMed
description SIMPLE SUMMARY: Interactions between people and dogs may lower participants’ stress levels. However, this is a fairly new area of research and there has not been a review of what we know across studies. We examined the existing research and found that human–dog interactions consistently improve some indications of human stress levels and don’t seem to negatively affect dogs. However, we need to do more research to gain a better understanding of the impacts on people and dogs with a wider lens that looks at more markers of stress. ABSTRACT: Positive relationships, including those between humans and other animals, particularly dogs, may be a way to reduce stress in humans. However, research into this area is relatively new, and a comprehensive review of the impacts of these interactions on humans and dogs has not been conducted. A scoping review of the scientific literature was conducted to explore what is known about the impacts of canine-assisted interventions on molecular biomarkers (e.g., cortisol and oxytocin) and associated measures (e.g., heart rate and blood pressure) of human and canine stress. As reported across 27 identified studies, canine-assisted interventions have consistently been demonstrated to elicit positive changes in human stress markers, and typically do not cause negative impacts on the studied canine stress markers. However, results were inconsistent across measures of stress. For example, in humans, it was common for a study to show improvements to cortisol levels but no change to self-reported stress, or vice versa. Many of the reviewed studies also had significant methodological issues, such as not aligning the timing of sample collections to when the analyzed stress biomarkers could be expected to peak. More rigorous research should be conducted on the impacts of canine-assisted interventions on a wider range of stress biomarkers.
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spelling pubmed-89095182022-03-11 Molecular Biomarkers of Adult Human and Dog Stress during Canine-Assisted Interventions: A Systematic Scoping Review Gandenberger, Jaci Flynn, Erin Moratto, Em Wendt, Ashley Morris, Kevin N. Animals (Basel) Systematic Review SIMPLE SUMMARY: Interactions between people and dogs may lower participants’ stress levels. However, this is a fairly new area of research and there has not been a review of what we know across studies. We examined the existing research and found that human–dog interactions consistently improve some indications of human stress levels and don’t seem to negatively affect dogs. However, we need to do more research to gain a better understanding of the impacts on people and dogs with a wider lens that looks at more markers of stress. ABSTRACT: Positive relationships, including those between humans and other animals, particularly dogs, may be a way to reduce stress in humans. However, research into this area is relatively new, and a comprehensive review of the impacts of these interactions on humans and dogs has not been conducted. A scoping review of the scientific literature was conducted to explore what is known about the impacts of canine-assisted interventions on molecular biomarkers (e.g., cortisol and oxytocin) and associated measures (e.g., heart rate and blood pressure) of human and canine stress. As reported across 27 identified studies, canine-assisted interventions have consistently been demonstrated to elicit positive changes in human stress markers, and typically do not cause negative impacts on the studied canine stress markers. However, results were inconsistent across measures of stress. For example, in humans, it was common for a study to show improvements to cortisol levels but no change to self-reported stress, or vice versa. Many of the reviewed studies also had significant methodological issues, such as not aligning the timing of sample collections to when the analyzed stress biomarkers could be expected to peak. More rigorous research should be conducted on the impacts of canine-assisted interventions on a wider range of stress biomarkers. MDPI 2022-03-04 /pmc/articles/PMC8909518/ /pubmed/35268219 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ani12050651 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Systematic Review
Gandenberger, Jaci
Flynn, Erin
Moratto, Em
Wendt, Ashley
Morris, Kevin N.
Molecular Biomarkers of Adult Human and Dog Stress during Canine-Assisted Interventions: A Systematic Scoping Review
title Molecular Biomarkers of Adult Human and Dog Stress during Canine-Assisted Interventions: A Systematic Scoping Review
title_full Molecular Biomarkers of Adult Human and Dog Stress during Canine-Assisted Interventions: A Systematic Scoping Review
title_fullStr Molecular Biomarkers of Adult Human and Dog Stress during Canine-Assisted Interventions: A Systematic Scoping Review
title_full_unstemmed Molecular Biomarkers of Adult Human and Dog Stress during Canine-Assisted Interventions: A Systematic Scoping Review
title_short Molecular Biomarkers of Adult Human and Dog Stress during Canine-Assisted Interventions: A Systematic Scoping Review
title_sort molecular biomarkers of adult human and dog stress during canine-assisted interventions: a systematic scoping review
topic Systematic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8909518/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35268219
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ani12050651
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