Does human-dog attachment increase the resilience and resistance to COVID-19? A biopsychosocial approach and future research

This article is a biopsychosocial proposal about improvement of resilience to diseases, including the COVID-19, due to affective attachment between humans and dogs. Resilience concerns the physical and emotional human capacity to respond positively to the adverse events such as diseases. Recently, s...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Boere, Vanner, Silva, ItaOliveira
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: 2021
Subjects:
Online Access:https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/oaiart?codigo=8831076
Description
Summary:This article is a biopsychosocial proposal about improvement of resilience to diseases, including the COVID-19, due to affective attachment between humans and dogs. Resilience concerns the physical and emotional human capacity to respond positively to the adverse events such as diseases. Recently, some authors have proposed independent hypotheses about role of oxytocin (OT) and crossed immunity to increase the psychological resilience and immune response against the COVID-19. This text extendsthe hypothesis to a biopsychosocial field, including the well-known benefits of the human-dog affective attachment on human health. Andproposesthat a strong and reciprocal affection between human and dog can increase the resilience and resistance to COVID-19, due the role of OT in the immune response, adding to crossed immunity. Other benefits such as emotional buffering, mental comfortand stress alleviation are adjunctive roles of dogs on human health and vice-versa. Este artigo é uma proposta biopsicossocial sobre a melhora da resiliência a doenças, incluindo a COVID-19, devido ao apego afetivo entre humanos e cães. A resiliência diz respeito à capacidade física e emocional do ser humano de responder positivamente aos eventos adversos, como as doenças. Recentemente, alguns autores propuseram hipóteses independentes sobre o papel da oxitocina (OT) e da imunidade cruzada para aumentar a resiliência e a resposta contra o COVID-19. Estende-sea hipótese a um campo biopsicossocial, incluindo os benefícios bem conhecidos do apego afetivo humano-cão à saúde humana. É proposto que as relações de afeto recíproco e forte entre humanos e cães podemaumentar a resiliência ao COVID-19, devido ao papel do OT na resposta imune, somando-se à imunidade cruzada. Outros benefícios, como proteção emocional, conforto mental e alívio do estresse são funções auxiliares dos cães na saúde humana e vice-versa. Este artículo es una propuesta biopsicosocial sobre la mejora de la resiliencia a enfermedades, incluida laCOVID-19, debido al apego ...