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

Abstract

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 extends the hypothesis to a biopsychosocial field, including the well-known benefits of the human-dog affective attachment on human health. And proposes that 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 comfort and stress alleviation are adjunctive roles of dogs on human health and vice-versa.