ArticleChildren (Basel, Switzerland)2023
Group Changes in Cortisol and Heart Rate Variability of Children with Down Syndrome and Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder during Dog-Assisted Therapy.
Article in Children (Basel, Switzerland), 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed, 4 citations in OpenAlex.
- Pet ownership and parent-reported mental health in pediatric transplantation. A cross-sectional study from the European reference network Transplantchild. The pink study.One health (Amsterdam, Netherlands) · 2026Article
- Dogs' Behavioural Responses to Dog-Assisted Interventions: A Field Study.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Article
- Agency denied: PADA and the perils of paternalistic dog care.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Dog-assisted therapy is hypothesized to lower stress in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and children with Down syndrome (DS), which may be visible on a physiological level. In this study, we measured heart rate variability (HRV) and salivary cortisol of 20 children with DS or ASD at the beginning and end of six weekly sessions of dog-assisted therapy. We found a decrease of cortisol levels during single sessions, but no overall effect after six sessions (six weeks). The effect of dog-assisted therapy on the increase of HRV could not be confirmed. This study is one of the first to use physiological measurements to test the effects of DAT.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.