Scholarship recipient Masaru Uechi is currently
an assistant in the department of social medicine at Tsukuba University.
The focus of his research was the relationship between the health of the
elderly and the keeping of companion animals. Satomi Village, where the
research was conducted, is located at the northernmost edge of Ibaraki Prefecture;
27.4% of its population is classified as elderly. In 2050, the proportion
of elderly in Japan's population is expected to peak at 32.3%, a figure
close to that for Satomi Village. In Satomi Village, moreover, the elderly
who live alone are increasing, and the burdens on regional society from
costs related to insurance, medical treatment, welfare and other matters
related to the elderly have already begun to grow. The location where this
research was conducted could thus be said to have a population structure
and problems that closely resemble what will be those of the country as
a whole in the 21st century.
At the same time, with the graying of society already under way, there are
not a few elderly who are bedridden. As this fact indicates, the health
of the elderly cannot be judged by longevity alone. Thus, to make such a
determination, an index, IADL (Instrumental Activities of Daily Living),
was developed. According to this index, seven activities considered indispensable
for daily living — Can one use the telephone by oneself? Can on buy
food and clothing by oneself? etc. — are studied as indicators of health,
and a person who is unable to perform one or more of them is considered
to have an "IADL disability." In the IADL-related research published
hitherto, a tendency for people with IADL disabilities to die sooner rather
than later has been reported.
Of the 1,345 people aged 65 or older in Satomi Village, 400 were selected
at random for this research. They were sent questionnaires to fill out,
and a telephone follow-up was then conducted. In this way, they were studied
with regard to: personal characteristics such as sex, age, and family structure;
medical history, including the names of past diseases; current state of
health, including whether blood pressure reducers were being taken; and
state of daily activities. At the same time, their relationship to companion
animals was also studied: whether they were presently keeping pets and,
if so, the type of pet and the number of years it had been kept; past pet
ownership; etc. A logistic recurrence analysis was then carried out on the
correlations between the two sets of data. (A logistic recurrence analysis
is a study that seeks to explain, using a few variables, the probability,
or expectation, that a particular phenomenon will occur.) "Regarding
the relationship between keeping pets and IADL disabilities," said
Mr. Uechi, "what we found was that the proportion of people with IADL
disabilities who had experience with keeping pets was lower than the proportion
who had no such experience. There was also a low proportion of IADL disabilities
among respondents who, to a question asking them to rate their fondness
for pets, answered, "To me a pet is a friend," from which we concluded
that keeping pets has psychological benefits. In other words, we found that
keeping dogs, a history of fondness for animals, and friendly feelings towards
pets in general are all factors in limiting the IADL disabilities of the
elderly. The greater the affection lavished on pets, the less blood pressure
reducers were used is another trend that was found. While we cannot prove
a connection between keeping pets and low blood pressure, we believe that
is only because of insufficient data, and plan to do follow-up research
in the future. |
The Study of Human-Animal
Interactions
