Veterinary experts establish new guidelines for diagnosing and monitoring CCDS.
A group of researchers from across the globe have released a set of guidelines veterinary professionals can use when diagnosing and monitoring canine cognitive dysfunction syndrome (CCDS). The guidelines will provide a standard definition of the condition as well as practical diagnostic criteria, plus can be used by both clinicians and researchers to help senior dogs who have cognitive issues.
According to the organizational release, CCDS is a chronic, progressive, and age-associated neurodegenerative syndrome which is characterized by cognitive and behavioral changes.1 Patients with CCDS can present with altered activity levels, anxiety, sleep disruption, house soiling as well as learning and memory impairment.
“We are seeing CCDS diagnoses with increasing frequency, but there isn’t a standardized method for the diagnosis,” said Natasha Olby, VetMB PhD, DACVIM (Neurology), Kady M. Gjessing, DVM, and Rahna M. Davidson distinguished chair in gerontology at North Carolina State University, in an organizational release.1 “We wanted to propose that standardized method as a starting point that can be built upon over time.” Olby is the leader of the working group and corresponding author of the work.
Within the guidelines, the researchers created a diagnostic flowchart to help professionals establish a diagnosis with 2 different levels of certainty, and they proposed 3 definitions of severity, ranging from mild to debilitating impairment.1 The researchers recommended to professionals that they start monitoring dogs for cognitive changes through routine senior dog surveys when patients are about 7 years old.
According to the research, CCDS manifests as changes in the following, commonly known as DISHAA2:
If a client reports behavioral abnormalities, veterinary teams should follow up with a CCDS scale and ongoing monitoring every 6 months. The CCDS scale should also be used on canine patients starting when they are 10 years old and then every 6 months after that. Following this step, the next ones are to rule out other ailments by conducting neurological and physical exams, and if possible, brain imaging.
“The good news here is that there is increased interest in finding treatments for CCDS,” Olby stated.1 “But in order to develop those treatments we must first be sure there’s an agreed upon definition of the condition.”
The researchers hope by providing veterinary professionals a workable definition of CCDS and its diagnostic criteria that it will improve diagnostic and therapeutics for senior canine patients.
“I selected the participants in this working group from experts in field who are either actively working on CCDS or who historically have set the standards – from those who first defined it to those who translated it into clinical practice,” Olby concluded. “We recognize that this document is just the start of the process, but it was developed as a working live document that can be added to over time as our understanding improves.”
This research was published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association and was supported in part by the American Kennel Club’s Canine Health Foundation.
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