The Dog Aging Project and TRIAD: what we will learn, and when

Every so often a piece of pet-health news travels faster than the science behind it. "A pill to make dogs live longer" is one of those headlines, and it usually traces back — in garbled form — to two real things: the Dog Aging Project and the trial inside it, TRIAD. They are worth understanding properly, because they are genuinely important, and because the honest account of them is more interesting than the hype.

The Dog Aging Project: dogs as the honest model of ageing

The Dog Aging Project is a large, open, long-term study following tens of thousands of companion dogs across the United States, through owner surveys, veterinary records, and biological samples (Creevy et al., Nature, 2022).

Why dogs? Because they may be the best model of human ageing we have. They share our homes, our air, our water, our sofas and — increasingly — our sedentary habits. They develop many of the same age-related diseases. And they run through an entire lifespan in a decade or so, which means a study can watch ageing happen at a speed human studies never can. A pet dog is a real animal ageing in a real environment, not a lab mouse in a cage. That makes the data unusually honest.

The project's first job is simply to map canine ageing at scale: what genetics, environment, and lifestyle actually predict a long, healthy dog life. That alone is a resource the field never had.

TRIAD: the trial that could change the definition of "old age"

Nested inside the project is TRIAD — the Test of Rapamycin In Aging Dogs. This is the one people mean when they talk about a longevity drug for dogs.

TRIAD is a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial giving low-dose rapamycin to several hundred older, large-breed dogs — the gold-standard design, in the animals whose faster ageing makes an effect detectable in a realistic timeframe. It builds directly on the earlier, smaller randomized trial in 24 dogs, which established that short-course low-dose rapamycin was tolerated and hinted at improved heart function.

What is TRIAD testing? Whether rapamycin improves healthspan and lifespan in companion dogs — measured through lifespan itself, cardiac function, cognition, activity, and age-related disease. It is, quite simply, the most serious test of a longevity drug ever mounted in a companion animal.

The sentence that matters most

Here it is, and it is the whole reason to read this article rather than a breathless one:

TRIAD has not reported.

There is no result yet. Nobody — not us, not the sellers, not the headline writers — can tell you whether rapamycin extends the lifespan of dogs, because the trial designed to answer that is still running. Anyone who states the outcome is stating something they do not know.

We label it, in our study library, with the tag we use for exactly this situation: ongoing — no result yet. That is not hedging. It is the single most important fact about the trial.

What a positive result would, and wouldn't, mean

Suppose TRIAD reads out positive. That would be historic: the first rigorous evidence that a drug extends lifespan in a companion animal, and a genuine shift in what "old age" has to mean for dogs.

It would not mean rapamycin is right for every dog, at every age, with every health condition. Dose, timing, breed, and — as we have written about at length — the health conditions that take it off the table would all still matter, and would still belong to a veterinarian. A positive trial opens a careful conversation; it does not end it.

And suppose it reads out negative, or mixed. That, too, would be a real result — and one this site would report as prominently as a positive one, because a longevity field that only publishes its hopes is not a science.

Why own this page now

Because when TRIAD reports, the question will spike overnight, and the internet will fill with confident summaries of varying accuracy. We would rather have described the trial honestly before the result than scramble after it. This page is a standing, sourced account of what is actually being tested — and the day there is a result, subscribe and we will write what it genuinely found, caveats intact.

Our evidence quiz will tell you whether your dog is even in the population TRIAD is studying, and what to ask your veterinarian in the meantime.

Not veterinary advice. Not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

References

Creevy K.E. et al. An open science study of ageing in companion dogs. Nature, 2022. Find on PubMed
Urfer S.R. et al. A randomized controlled trial to establish effects of short-term rapamycin treatment in 24 middle-aged companion dogs. GeroScience, 2017. Find on PubMed
Dog Aging Project. dogagingproject.org