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According to a new study announced by the pharmaceutical firm BioScent Dx, dogs could one day be able to tell doctors if a patient was suffering from cancer by smell.
The goal of the study was to determine how accurately a canine can detect biomarkers of lung cancer in the bloodstream by simply using their sense of smell. Dogs have odor receptors 10,000 times more accurate than humans, according to a press release announcing the results.
Four beagles were used for this experiment, involving clicker training.
According to the study, three of the dogs were able to correctly identify lung cancer samples in 96.7% of the cases and normal samples in 97.5% of the cases. A fourth dog has been described as "powerless to play during training".
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The authors of the study claim that this opens the door to a larger-scale research project involving cancer sniffer dogs. This could lead to accurate cancer detection that is less expensive and less invasive than current methods.
"A very sensitive test to detect cancer could potentially save thousands of lives and change the treatment of the disease," said lead researcher Heather Junqueira in a statement.
The company says the next phase has already been launched. This is a bad cancer study in which participants give breath samples that will be examined by sniffer cancer dogs.
The results were presented this week at the annual meeting of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
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