Pancreatitis

Pancreatitis is a disease in dogs which involves premature activation of the organ’s digestive enzymes which can lead to autodigestion and inflammation. The severity of the disease can additionally range from sub-clinical to fatal. The risk factors associated with the development of pancreatitis in dogs, include breed, drugs and infections. From a nutritional standpoint, a high fat diet has also been associated with the increase risk of the condition. However, this would appear to be contradictory to human research, whereby a diet high in fat and low in carbohydrate has been demonstrated to decrease fasting triglyceride levels, which are associated with pancreatitis. Triglycerides are a type of fat found in blood, so it would appear counterintuitive that a low fat, high carbohydrate diet would result in the witnessed increase. Yet, studies have shown that a diet of this composition fed to humans led to both triglyceride overproduction, a consequence of carbohydrates being converted to fat in the liver and delayed clearance from the blood. Having already established that dogs want to eat fat rich and protein based diet, and that their ancient ancestors, wild wolves also consumed a similar diet, could it really be that a diet of this composition carried with it a health risk? I decided to conduct a study to determine this.

Evidence suggests that high fat diets are not responsible for pancreatitis in dogs

The approach I used was to feed a group of dogs a standard commercial dry diet for several weeks, I then measured their triglyceride concentrations, canine pancreatic lipase (which is regarded as the gold standard for determining pancreatitis in dogs) and several other biomarkers. After this, half the dogs moved onto a high fat diet for eight weeks, while the other half consumed a high carbohydrate diet, which consisted of a similar protein-fat-carbohydrate ratio to that of the baseline commercial dry diet. Midway through the timeframe, the two groups of dogs had these measurements taken again and finally at the end of the study. After processing the samples, I determined that there was a significant decrease from the triglyceride concentrations at baseline (when the dogs ate the commercial dry diet) and the high fat diet, but not the high carbohydrate diet. This outcome supports that found in human research, namely that a high fat, low carbohydrate diet decreases triglycerides, associated with the development of pancreatitis, compared to the carbohydrate dense dry baseline diet.

However, an intriguing unexpected finding was that the triglyceride concentrations of the high carbohydrate diet fed dogs had reduced considerably from when fed the baseline dry diet, which consisted of an almost identical macronutrient ratio. Defining why is difficult, although factors such as moisture, ingredients, level of diet processing and possibly digestibility might have had important roles.

In conclusion, the study I completed showed that when dogs consume a high fat diet, no increased risk of developing pancreatitis was observed. Moreover, it appeared that regardless of macronutrient content, a dry commercial extruded diet, seems to play a part in elevating triglycerides concentrations. Although more research is required to tease apart and study specific possible reasons.