Medical detecting dogs are a perfect example of demonstrate how our canines’ unique abilities and loyalty can enhance our safety and well-being in innovative ways.
Our dogs are part of our families, our lives, and our society. Since the beginning of time, they have proved their ability to do whatever their human friends needed or asked from them.
Dogs’ Abilities
For our ancestors, dogs represented an astute hunting partner, a reliable shepherd, a ferocious defender of a man’s possessions or loved ones, and an affectionate friend who provided comfort in difficult situations.
Dogs have the remarkable potential to accomplish countless tasks mirroring human abilities while embodying a loyalty that transcends human understanding.
Perhaps based on their adaptability and devotion for humans, dogs have been able to develop new and more sophisticated ways of saving our lives and protecting us from current dangers.
Canine Nose: Detecting Illnesses Effectively!
Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, helped by the growth of worldwide communications, numerous anecdotal reports of dogs alerting their owners of upcoming seizures, health conditions, and even cancer became a popular subject in the news around the world. In all these cases, these were pet dogs who had the gift of identifying something was threatening their owners and exhibited anxious behavior and signs of being upset.
Cancer cells exude very low amounts of volatile organic compounds, alkanes and benzene derivatives that are not present in the healthy tissue. Many cancer studies have aimed to detect these by-products of cancer cells by using the most sophisticated tools of scent detection, a mass spectrometer and a dog’s nose. If our beloved dogs can track human scents like any other living creature, why wouldn’t they be able to detect diabetes or cancer? A dog’s nose is a very sensitive device with approximately 50 times more scent receptors than humans. Hence, they able to detect substances in concentrations as small as one part per billion.
Medical Detection Dogs: Key Studies Unleashed!
In 2004, a research conducted by the British Medical Journal reported that dog’s nose highly developed sense of smell could detect cancer in patients. In 2006, The New York Times published an article about five dogs, three Labradors and two Portuguese Water dogs, trained to detect cancer with 99 percent accuracy. The study, conducted at the Pine Street Clinic in San Anselmo, California, capitalizes on the exceptional ability of dogs to detect even traces of the substances present in a tumor’s tissue.
Dogs Detecting Cancer
Studies in cancer biomarkers demonstrated that specific volatile organic compounds (VOC) are present in the urine of bladder cancer patients and trained dogs were capable of identifying the cancer samples. Since then, and based on the existence of specific volatile biomarkers associated to different types of cancer, researchers continued to study canine scent detection to detect prostate, colorectal, breast, and ovarian cancer by studying the presence of VOCs in urine, fecal samples, and human breath, places where cancer volatiles may appear during the early stages of the disease.
Under Dr. Hideto Sonoda’s lead, researches at Kyushu University in Fukuoka in 2011 found that a specially trained dog could detect colorectal cancer among patients with up to 98 percent accuracy. This study brought empirical and scientific proof to cases like Marine. The latter is a 8-year-old female Labrador retriever trained in St. Sugar Cancer-Sniffing Dog Training Center who has a vast experience in cancer detection. She was able to detect 12 types of tumors by examining patients’ breath before the mentioned study.
In 2012, The European Respiratory Journal published a study performed by German researchers at the Schillerhoehe Hospital of Gerlingen which proved that trained dogs can correctly detect lung cancer by detecting volatile organic compounds in human breath. In this study, 220 volunteers participated, out of which 60 had lung cancer, 50 had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and the rest were in good health.
Two German Shepherds, an Australian Shepherd and a Labrador Retriever, tested these patients and accurately identified, with 71 per cent of accuracy, lung cancer in its early stages, when it is still treatable, but the lack of symptoms make its diagnosis difficult. The dogs could even discriminate lung cancer from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a chronic disease often associated with later development of lung cancer.
Dogs Detecting Other Health Issues
Trained dogs cannot only recognize VOC, seizure alert dogs can also sense behavioral changes such as signs of high blood pressure, heart attack, epileptic, and diabetic seizures. These type of service dogs are specialized in alerting their owners of a potential diabetic seizure by detecting ketones, toxic acids whose high concentration in the bloodstream is associated with high blood sugar. In all cases, early detection is crucial so they are canine life-saving heroes.
The Future of Medical Detection Dogs
The development of electronic devices that have the same abilities a dog’s nose has are underway. These will most definitely be an alternative and a safe method for detecting diseases with great accuracy. Nevertheless, maybe, in the meantime, it would be interesting to give dogs more space in this field and take advantage of their non-harmful and non-invasive sniffing method as an additional source, which combined with traditional methods, could potentially contribute to reducing disease diagnosis errors.
Updates
We have recently updated this article to include the latest information on medical detection dogs and electronic devices inspired by canine nose.
Electronic dog nose
Physical sensors for sight and hearing have long been developed, but creating sensors for taste and smell has been challenging due to difficulties in quantifying human senses. In 1989, Kyushu University patented a “taste sensor”, which is now utilized in food and pharmaceutical industries. Additionally, advancements have enabled the quantification of odors, including the creation of an electronic dog nose with superior sensitivity, also developed by Kyushu University.
Recent studies on medical detection dogs
Dognosis and Medical Detection Dogs’ Phase-2 trial showed trained dogs could detect seven cancer types with over 90% accuracy using breath samples from 1,502 participants.
Penn Vet’s Working Dog Center (University of Pennsylvania), found dogs could identify canine cancer in blood samples with 70% accuracy.
A University of Bristol study revealed dogs with optimistic emotional states performed better in detection tasks, suggesting potential for enhanced training methods.
What’s Inside
Dogs have been vital to humans as companions and helpers, notably due to their extraordinary sense of smell, which is 50 times more sensitive than humans. They can accurately detect health issues like cancer and diabetes, with trained dogs achieving detection rates up to 99%. Studies show they can identify cancer through breath and urine samples. Combining dogs’ natural abilities with traditional diagnostics could improve disease detection and patient outcomes.
