60 MINUTES

The distinguished CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes aired a segment on March 22 featuring correspondent Anderson Cooper interviewing Colorado State University scientists about their research into dementia in dogs as a path to better understanding – and potentially treating – cognitive decline in both dogs and people.

The episode highlighted the work of Dr. Stephanie McGrath, a veterinary neurologist, and Dr. Julie Moreno, a neurotoxicologist, both of whom are associate professors in CSU’s College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. The show reached millions of viewers.

McGrath, Moreno, and their colleagues are teaming up on an ambitious, nationwide project called the Brain Health Study, which aims to better understand canine cognitive decline, a condition like Alzheimer’s disease in people. By studying brain aging and dementia in more than 500 dogs – from the cellular to the behavioral level – the scientists hope to move toward medical treatments for neurological conditions that are typically age-related and pose often heartbreaking difficulties for companion animals and for human patients, families, and society.

The Brain Health Study is part of an even larger nationwide research initiative called the Dog Aging Project; it is funded by the National Institutes of Health, among others. The project seeks to understand how genes, lifestyle, and environment influence health and aging. The project’s ultimate goal is helping dogs and humans live longer, healthier lives.

The research is significant because cognitive decline is prevalent in dogs and people. Canine cognitive decline may affect 35% of dogs older than 8, the Brain Health Study reports. Meantime, about 12% of people 65 and older have Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias; that proportion is expected to grow. There is no broadly effective treatment available, making the subject an urgent research priority, McGrath, Moreno, and colleagues wrote in a research paper.

Dogs are a valuable model for understanding dementia in people because the disease appears similarly in the two species; dogs have a condensed lifespan, so scientists can observe disease development; and the species share environments, McGrath and Moreno said.

The use of companion animals to study naturally occurring disease in both animals and people is at the heart of a movement called translational medicine. CSU has been a leader in the field for decades, notably in cancer and orthopedic research.

Photo at the top: 60 Minutes correspondent Anderson Cooper, left, listens as Dr. Stephanie McGrath explains changes in the brain with dementia. Photo: John Cline / Colorado State University.