VOA常速英语:狗狗教我们如何健康地变老

Dogs are so attuned to humans that many people think of them as family.
I can’t imagine, you know, my life without them.
So, you know, they are just part of my life.
According to a pet owner survey, there are some 90 million pet dogs in the U.S..
The university of Washington is recruiting 10 thousand of them for a study on aging.
The goal is to follow dogs for their entire lives.
Young, old, big, small, males, females, all dogs, all around the U.S. to understand how the biology and the environment shape healthy aging in dogs.
The university is partnering with Veterinarian Texas A&M University.
By studying the aging in pet dogs living in human environments, we can learn things that will translate to human health as we age in a shorter period of time.
And we also directly benefit companion dogs along the way, which is extremely important to me as a veterinarian.

Dogs and humans aging much the same way.
They have similar genome, and get similar diseases.
As pets, they also share our environment.
Researchers will look for lifestyle factors that also affect human, such as diet, activity level, and where the dog lives, in addition to genetics and medical history.
One of the goals is to find out how to prevent age-related diseases.
Traditionally, in medicine, we have waited until people are sick.
And we try to do something about it.
We try to cure their diseases.
We try to at least alleviate their symptoms.
The goal here is really to keep dogs and people healthy as long as possible before they get sick.
I think this is kind of a really important aspect targeting the biology of aging directly rather than targeting individual diseases as they happen.
The data would be available to all scientists to encourage research on improving old age for both humans and dogs