Warning to all dog owners!

[RStar]

I always heard it was dangerous to give your dog chocolate. And, you don't think much about artificial sweetners when it comes to pets. But Xylitol can kill your dog, and if given half a chance, most dogs will get into anything. Even the left-overs in the trash.


Gwaltney-Brant said for dogs, ingesting even a small amount of xylitol can trigger significant insulin release, which drops their blood sugar and can be fatal.

"A 22-pound dog who consumes one gram of xylitol should be treated," she said, adding that further studies were needed to definitely establish a cause-and-effect relationship.


Read the whole story here (http://articles.news.aol.com/news/_a/dog-owners-warned-over-sugar-free-items/20061001101809990005?ncid=NWS00010000000001)

So, please be carefull if you have a dog, or pass this on to someone who does!

[Alex]

Man I hate science reporting.

No mention of absolute and relative risks (consuming a single apple seed can be fatal to humans, but if a million people ate one apple seed only three might die). No mention of the basis for saying that even a gram can cause problems (the one specific example has the dog eating more than a pound of the stuff in one go and also has cross contamination from eating chocolate already known to be harmful to dogs). No mention of what the "treatment" is that you should seek if the dog does consume the stuff. No real comment on the fact that an eight dog study offers only the slightest hint of causality (it does have the caveat that more study is needed to establish causality but otherwise assumes it as a given).


I'm not saying there isn't a health issue here, just that science reporting really sucks and rarely gives the useful information. But I do strongly support the idea that if you feed gum to your dog to make sure it isn't sugar-free.

[RStar]

The issue isn't to not feed your dog sugar free treats, but rather to be careful that the dog can't get access to it. I'm sure someone didn't feed their dog three muffins on purpose.

And the treatment would be administered by a vet, I'm sure. What treatment is used is not as important as getting the animal to the proper care right away.

But yes, the report could have been a little more in depth. It felt like they just wanted to get something on the net as quicikly as possible, didn't it?

[Alex]

Would the treatment be administered by a vet? I have no idea, but there is no description of what it would be.

And without absolute and relative risk information I have no idea how much I should panic if I just have a strong suspicion that the dog ate some of this sweetener. What are the symptoms the dog might show if it has eaten some and I don't know it?

There is no new informational content in the article (the ASPCA has warned about consumption of this sweetener for quite a while). It is the wire service equivelant of the nightly news teaser "Can your recliner kill you? Film at 11:00."

As I said, this could be serious, just the reporting offers nothing to allow one to make such evaluations. As usual, science reporting (and more specifically, reporting on published research) sucks and plays a huge part in the inability by large segments of the population to make reasonable risk evaluations.

[RStar]

That's very true. It said it can cause liver damage and low blood sugar, so what ever those symtoms are I suppose. But you are right, there is so little information that I wonder if it is true.

I would think being on AOL News that it wouldn't be a prank or Urban Legand, and they did give names, "Researchers Sharon Gwaltney-Brant and Eric Dunayer with staff at a poison unit of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Urbana, Illinois", and the report was published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association. But who goes out to read that?

But I agree with you, after further reading I can see it is poor science reporting.

[Alex]

The Journal of the American Veterinarian Medical Association is available online with the contents index available for free (to read requires subscription). It does not appear to be in the most current issue on there but frequently these stories run before the actual street date.

I have no doubt the study exists and shows roughly what the article says. I'm not criticizing the research, just the unhelpful reporting.

[RStar]

Yes, but most people wouldn't try to track down the articles to verify them.

And my point is that the unhelpfull reporting makes people wonder if the story is even true. They really do more harm than good when they do that kind of reporting, don't they.

Thanks for pointing that out, Alex!

[alphabassettgrrl]

This story was printed in my local paper.

[RStar]

It was in the OC Register also.

And tonight it was on the news on TV. I guess there are a lot of people worried.