Does your ovary story signal a time to re-think that removing ovaries has no significant downside to a dog’s healthy longevity?

Our provocative findings in Aging Cell signal that it’s time to re-think the notion that taking away ovaries has no significant downside to a dog’s healthy longevity. Perhaps it would help us if we thought of lifetime ovary exposure as information — information that instructs the organism. Just how long and how healthy a female lives reflects what her cells, tissues, and organs thought they heard from the message received. Of course in biology, there is no single message but a symphony of messages, enabling each individual to successfully respond to environmental challenges. Our findings suggest that ovaries orchestrate that symphony. Taking away ovaries in early or mid-life makes for muddled information, less than perfect music.

Undoubtedly, there will be protagonists and antagonists in this ovary story. The protagonists will be open-minded to following a new script. They will embrace the idea of ovary sparing for critical periods of time to maximize longevity. They might even recognize the need for some sort of “ovarian mimetic” in spayed dogs to optimize healthy aging. The antagonists in this story — the defenders of the old script – will dismiss as trivial the notion that ovaries regulate the rate of aging and influence healthy longevity. Lines will be drawn and opinions will fly. But that’s what healthy debate is — antagonists and protagonists keeping a high priority issue front and center, not allowing it to fade into the woodwork. It would seem that, in light of the new scientific findings, a contemporary dialogue should balance the potential benefits of elective spay¹ with its possible detrimental effects on longevity.

1. Kustritz MV: “Determining the optimal age for gonadectomy of dogs and cats.” J Am Vet Med Assoc 231: 1665-75, 2007.