Dogs can be trained to detect malaria – Quartz

Malaria is a sinister disease even when it does not make people sick.

Some people infected with the parasite Plasmodium who cause the disease never develop symptoms, but are still able to transmit the disease to others (usually by mosquitoes). Because these people feel perfectly healthy, they have no reason to be tested or treated. This is one of the main reasons why malaria is a persistent human disease that kills an estimated 400,000 people each year.

If public health officials could detect infections at an early stage, they could, in theory, stop some epidemics before they even declare themselves. However, this has always required rapid and invasive blood tests, or the treatment of entire communities, including some who do not need them. So now scientists are turning to dogs to find alternatives. More precisely, at their hypersensitive nose.

Earlier this week, Steven Lindsay, an entomologist at the University of Durham, in the north of the UK, presented the first results of a study showing that dogs can be trained to detect infections Malaria simply smelling the socks were worn for 12 hours at night – enough time for undetectable odors by the man to seep into the fabric. His team in Durham collaborated with researchers based in London and The Gambia. According to World Bank data, out of every 1,000 Gambian residents out of every 1,000 in the Gambia, 208 had malaria, making it one of the most prevalent areas of the world.

"People with malaria parasites emit distinct odors. skin, "Lindsay said in a statement. "Our study found that dogs, who have an extremely sensitive sense of smell, can be trained to detect these odors even on clothing worn by an infected person."

The Lindsay Foundation has been awarded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Grand Challenge grant to fund his work, and three dogs were donated by a charity called Medical Detection Dogs, who had previously trained dogs to detect other diseases, including prostate cancer.

Lindsay and her team have provided socks to about 600 children in the Gambia, according to the Washington Post (paywall), who have undergone basic medical exams, have been screened for malaria (and are likely to have been treated for HIV). They needed it) and were invited to sleep with their socks.The socks of children with fever, indicating that they might have been contrac malaria, were not included, but the researchers were able to recover 200 socks of healthy children and 30 asymptomatic children but carriers of Plasmodium in the blood. These socks were frozen and shipped to London, where they were kept for more than a year, while dogs were trained to identify the specific smell of an infection with malaria.

Trained dogs were eventually able to find those of children with malaria. about 70% of the time; they correctly ignored the healthy children socks 90% of the time. Lindsay believes that some of the mistakes made by dogs were due to the fact that the odor of Plasmodium parasites can only be detected after reaching a certain level of maturity. Because the parasite develops and changes form once settled in the human body, it is possible that Plasmodium in some of the bodies of children is more mature than in others.

not yet reviewed or published by peers; Lindsay introduced her at the meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 2018 in New Orleans, Louisiana this week. But a proof-of-concept study has shown that it is possible to non-invasively detect malaria in large populations, particularly in places where asymptomatic people can travel, unaware that they are carriers of the disease. the disease, as in airports. More work and more trials are needed, but in the future, it may be possible for the malaria detection dogs to scan large groups of people and report to individuals that they need to be scanned. a treatment before spreading Plasmodium .