Peer-reviewed veterinary case report
Later neutering in female dogs lowers early urinary incontinence risk
By Pegram, Camilla et al.·Published in PloS one·2024·The Royal Veterinary College, United Kingdom·View original on PubMed →
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Original publication title: Later-age neutering causes lower risk of early-onset urinary incontinence than early neutering-a VetCompass target trial emulation study.
Plain-English summary
A study found that female dogs (bitches) neutered later, between 7 to 18 months old, have a lower risk of developing early-onset urinary incontinence (UI) compared to those neutered earlier, between 3 to 7 months old. Early-onset UI can be diagnosed in dogs under 8.5 years old, and the research showed that those neutered later had about 20% lower odds of this condition. This suggests that pet owners should consider waiting until their dog is at least 7 months old to neuter, unless there are other important reasons to do it sooner.
People also search for: why is my dog leaking urine · female dog neutering age · urinary incontinence in dogs treatment
Abstract
There is growing evidence supporting clinically important associations between age at neutering in bitches and subsequent urinary incontinence (UI), although much of this evidence to date is considered weak. Target trial emulation is an innovative approach in causal inference that has gained substantial attention in recent years, aiming to simulate a hypothetical randomised controlled trial by leveraging observational data. Using anonymised veterinary clinical data from the VetCompass Programme, this study applied the target trial emulation framework to determine whether later-age neutering (≥ 7 to ≤ 18 months) causes decreased odds of early-onset UI (diagnosed < 8.5 years) compared to early-age neutering (3 to < 7 months). The study included bitches in the VetCompass database born from January 1, 2010, to December 31, 2012, and neutered between 3 and 18 months old. Bitches were retrospectively confirmed from the electronic health records as neutered early or later. The primary outcome was a diagnosis of early-onset UI. Informed from a directed acyclic graph, data on the following covariates were extracted: breed, insurance status, co-morbidities and veterinary group. Inverse probability of treatment weighting was used to adjust for confounding, with inverse probability of censoring weighting accounting for censored bitches. The emulated trial included 612 early-age neutered bitches and 888 later-age neutered bitches. A pooled logistic regression outcome model identified bitches neutered later at 0.80 times the odds (95% CI 0.54 to 0.97) of early-onset UI compared with bitches neutered early. The findings show that later-age neutering causes reduced odds of early-onset UI diagnosis compared with early-age neutering. Decision-making on the age of neutering should be carefully considered, with preference given to delaying neutering until after 7 months of age unless other major reasons justify earlier surgery. The study is one of the first to demonstrate successful application of the target trial framework to veterinary observational data.
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Search related cases →Original publication on PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38959183/