Dog diagnosis can detect seizures, study finds | Life

PARIS, March 29 – Researchers said yesterday that dogs could use their remarkable sense of smell to recognize the specific scent of seizures, highlighting the hope that canine caregivers could one day protect patients before a seizure do not declare themselves.

Previous tests have shown that dogs are able to detect the odors of certain diseases, including certain cancers, diabetes and malaria.

There is also anecdotal evidence that they may feel that their owner is about to have a crisis, although this has been misunderstood to date.

French researchers have used five dogs – Casey, Dodger, Lana, Zoey and Roo – in a study to detect a scent specifically related to a seizure in humans.

They introduced dogs to a variety of odors from epileptic patients, including body odors emitted during a quiet activity, during exercise and during an attack.

Casey, Dodger and Zoey all identified the scent of fits 100% of the time, while Lana and Roo detected the right sample, two times out of three.

"The results exceeded our expectations by showing that there was indeed a general smell of epileptic seizure," said Amelie Catala, a researcher at the University of Rennes and University of Rennes. lead author of the study.

"We hope that this will open up new lines of research that could help anticipate crises and thus lead patients to seek safety."

The nose of dogs has become very sensitive and can detect specific organic compounds at a concentration of less than 0.001 parts per billion.

Today's most sophisticated "electronic noses", designed to capture potentially harmful odors that humans can not feel, have a detection threshold of about 300 parts per billion.

Catala said that had it been previously shown that dogs were able to detect chronic diseases, this experiment showed that they could potentially diagnose episodes of acute health lasting only a few minutes.

"The study of odors using dogs is a quick, inexpensive, non-invasive and effective method of screening for diseases that can be difficult to identify normally," she said. .

The paper was published in the newspaper Scientific reports on nature. – AFP-Relaxnews