Labradors: demography, mortality and disorders

MellowYellow

MellowYellow

I saw this too. I didn't quite understand though why exactly median life span was shorter for chocolates, if the main problems they are liable to are ear and skin issues???

I was really quite shocked to see the neutering statistics - almost 60% of all bitches in the study were spayed, with almost 55% of males neutered! If one of the main debilitating factors to affect labradors is degenerative joint disease, and if obesity is particularly noticeable in neutered males, then this really is something that owners of young dogs considering whether to neuter should be made aware of...
 
snowbunny

snowbunny

Location
Andorra and Spain
MellowYellow said:
I didn't quite understand though why exactly median life span was shorter for chocolates, if the main problems they are liable to are ear and skin issues???
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It seems to be suggesting there may be immune response differences in chocolates:

The significantly shorter lifespan of chocolate dogs compared with non-chocolate dogs may reflect differences in lifetime burden of disease, notably disorders of the integument (see below), that may create differences in accumulated immune response.

also:

This serves to highlight that most common diseases are not terminal and that disease predisposition in life is not the same as disease predisposition as a cause of death.
 
HAH

HAH

Moderator
Location
Devon, UK
snowbunny said:
I saw this today. I find the differences between "chocolate" and "not chocolate" dogs to be interesting/worrying. eg, median longevity for "not chocolate" is 12.1 years, but for chocolate, this falls to 10.7 years (obviously over a much smaller sample size).

Labrador retrievers under primary veterinary care in the UK: demography, mortality and disorders
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I think you’ve highlighted the major limitation here which is that the mortality data were based on a sample of 176 dogs that died during the course of the study, of which only 34 were chocolate. This is a tiny number on which to base mortality estimates, and the range of age at death (3.8-15.5) shows huge variation in a small pool. And they report the median (I.e. mid-point and fairly meaningless in this context) rather than the mean (I.e. average, totalled across all 34 ages of death /34) which gives a better indication of the mortality range.

In short, I’d be sceptical of their conclusions around colour-related mortality :)
 
HAH

HAH

Moderator
Location
Devon, UK
Potentially, but I'd argue in such a small sample without confidence interval or standard deviation data it doesn't add anything, in that we can't see the distribution of the data, and it may overly represent those scores in the mid point. BUT I might well be wrong - wouldn't fight this in a court of law!
 
M

M.F.

Notwithstanding there might be issues with the design of the study, I’d guess that chocolates might be bred less well than blacks and yellows because they’re so popular—they were definitely the trendy Lab colour a few years ago. Therefore, poor stock might’ve been used, with dire consequences unfortunately.
 
snowbunny

snowbunny

Location
Andorra and Spain
I don’t think the vast majority of Labradors are bred with much thought whatsoever - it’s a relatively small percentage of the total who come from serious breeders.
The thing with chocolate is that it’s recessive, though, so it’s a more restricted gene pool than when dealing with blacks and yellows.
 
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