Evaluation of body composition of dogs with chronic kidney disease

Abstract

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is linked to polyuria, polydipsia, proteinuria and cachexia. Cachexia can be described as loss of lean body mass caused by disease and, in dogs with CKD, comes from protein catabolism, which occurs when the energy intake is not sufficient. An excess in protein intake in the animal diet may exacerbate the uremia signs of CKD, whereas an inefficient intake will occasion cachexia, reducing patient's survival and currently energy requirements for dogs and cats with CKD remains unknown. This study aims to compare healthy dogs and dogs' with CKD's body composition to better understand cachexia as an effect of protein catabolism in dogs with this particular disease. The study will be in a completely randomized design, with 4 to 6 chronic kidney patients and 6 healthy adult dogs. These will undergo standardization exams for better characterization of health and CKD staging and will receive a renal adjuvant diet for a period of 15 days, which is when they will have their body composition evaluated by muscular ultrasonography, making measurements of longissimus dorsi and medius gluteus muscles and the dilution method with the deuterium (2H) isotope, applied subcutaneously and measured in plasma at baseline and after 3 hours (enrichment). The data will be examined by analysis of variance and when the difference was detected in the F test, the averages will be revealed by the Tukey test. Values with competitions in time will be evaluated by analysis of variance of repeated measures, and the averages will also be detected by Tukey's test. Values of P<0.05 will be considered significant. Key-words: dogs; chronic kidney disease; cachexia; body composition; deuterium