Cancer sniffing dogs trained to help doctors

The Britain’s National Health Service approved training dogs to smell traces of prostate cancer.

“Dogs have got this fantastic sense of smell; three-hundred million sensory receptors, us humans have five million. So they’re very, very good at finding minute odors. What we now know is that cancer cells that are dividing differently have different volatile organic compounds — smelly compounds — that are associated with the cells. And dogs with their incredible sense of small can find these in things like breath and urine,” said Dr. Claire Guest who co-founded charity Medical Detection Dogs in 2008 to train specialist dogs to detect human diseases.

Initial trials show that trained dogs can sniff tumors in urine 93% of the time. The dogs were trained for six months to identify the scent of cancer cells. During training, dogs sniff a machine with eight urine samples. When they find the cancer-positive sample, they signal through stopping, barking, or licking the closed bottle.

“These dogs have the ability to screen hundreds of samples in a day; it’s something they find very easy, they enjoy their work. To them it’s a hunt game – they find the cancer,” said Guest.

The training is now just focused on detecting prostate cancer, but soon it may expand to detecting other cancers and diseases.

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Category: Features, Wellness and Complementary Therapies