Abstract
Study design
Prospective cross-sectional cohort study.
Objectives
The canine spontaneous model of spinal cord injury (SCI) is as an important pre-clinical platform as it recapitulates key facets of human injury in a naturally occurring context. The establishment of an observational canine SCI registry constitutes a key step in performing epidemiologic studies and assessing the impact of therapeutic strategies to enhance translational research. Further, accumulating information on dogs with SCI may contribute to current “big data” approaches to enhance understanding of the disease using heterogeneous multi-institutional, multi-species datasets from both pre-clinical and human studies.
Setting
Multiple veterinary academic institutions across the United States and Europe.
Methods
Common data elements recommended for experimental and human SCI studies were reviewed and adapted for use in a web-based registry, to which all dogs presenting to member veterinary tertiary care facilities were prospectively entered over ~1 year.
Results
Analysis of data accumulated during the first year of the registry suggests that 16% of dogs with SCI present with severe, sensorimotor-complete injury and that 15% of cases are seen by a tertiary care facility within 8 h of injury. Similar to the human SCI population, 34% were either overweight or obese.
Conclusions
Severity of injury and timing of presentation suggests that neuroprotective studies using the canine clinical model could be conducted efficiently using a multi-institutional approach. Additionally, pet dogs with SCI experience similar comorbidities to people with SCI, in particular obesity, and could serve as an important model to evaluate the effects of this condition.
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Acknowledgements
This work is a product of CANSORT-SCI, the canine spinal cord injury clinical trials consortium. We gratefully acknowledge Ms. Amanda Disher, Ms. Heather Anderson, and Ms. Brittany Ridenhour for their assistance with data collection and entry.
Funding
This work was funded in part by NIH UL1TR001070 and by Mission Connect, grant # 015-105.
Author contributions
S.A.M. was responsible for designing and building the database, extracting and analyzing data, interpreting data, and contributed to writing the report. N.Z. was responsible for designing and building the database and screening potentially eligible cases. She also provided feedback on the report. I.S. and Y.S.N.-L. were responsible for designing the database and contributed to writing the report. N.G., R.C.d.C., J.M.L., N.D.J., V.M.S., and A.T. were responsible for designing the database, screening potentially eligible cases, and contributed to writing the report. N.J.O. was responsible for designing the database, screening potentially eligible cases, interpreting data, and contributed to writing the report.
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Moore, S.A., Zidan, N., Spitzbarth, I. et al. Development of an International Canine Spinal Cord Injury observational registry: a collaborative data-sharing network to optimize translational studies of SCI. Spinal Cord 56, 656–665 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41393-018-0145-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41393-018-0145-4
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