About the Authors

Louise Maranda

Contributed equally to this work with: Louise Maranda, Olga T. Gupta

louise.maranda@umassmed.edu

Current address: Department of Quantitative Health Sciences, AS6.1063, The Albert Sherman Center at UMass Medical School, 55 Lave avenue North, Worcester, MA, 01655, United States of America.

Affiliation Department of Quantitative Health Sciences, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, Massachusetts, United States of America

Olga T. Gupta

Contributed equally to this work with: Louise Maranda, Olga T. Gupta

Current address: Department of Pediatrics, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, 5323 Harry Hines Boulevard, Dallas, Texas, 75390, United States of America.

Affiliation Division of Endocrinology, Department of Pediatrics, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, United States of America

Competing Interests

The WALTHAM Centre for Pet Nutrition (www.mars.com), a division of Mars, Incorporated, contributed to the NIH budget allocated to the Human/Animal bond initiative that funded this study. There are no patents, products in development or marketed products to declare. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials, as detailed online in the guide for authors.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: LM OG. Performed the experiments: LM OG. Analyzed the data: LM. Wrote the paper: LM OG.