Understanding diet-associated dilated cardiomyopathy in dogs: a comprehensive review and case series

Abstract

Dilated cardiomyopathy is a slowly progressing degenerative disease that causes dilation of the cardiac chambers, systolic dysfunction, and finally congestive heart failure, making it a serious disease that causes the death of many animals. It is characterized by being a disease with very slow progress and a long asymptomatic phase. Furthermore, it has an unknown etiology which complicates its diagnosis and prevention. Due to an increase in the prevalence of the disease in atypical breeds that were fed grain-free diets, the FDA issued an alert to investigate a possible relationship between DCM and these diets. Numerous cases have been reported as compatible with this. Certain alterations have been observed in cardiac markers, taurine values, and echocardiographic studies of these patients. Several studies have been carried out on the possible origin between these foods and the disease. In many cases, animals treated by diet change, and sometimes with taurine supplementation, showed stabilization in echocardiographic parameters. However, the average recovery time ranges between 6 and 12 months, so in certain cases the use of cardiovascular medication is required, making it difficult to determine whether the improvement has been due to dietary change, medication, or a combination of both. A relationship is suspected between some legumes and low absorption of essential amino acids for cardiac functionality, which may be due to the high content of these seeds. However, in several animal studies with diet-associated DCM they did not have a low level of these amino acids. For these reasons, investigations continue to determine whether the origin of this outbreak is a nutritional deficiency, toxicity, or a combination of nutritional factors.