Dogs can detect cancer in the blood with an accuracy of 97%

Dogs have odor receptors 10,000 times more accurate than those of humans, which makes them extremely sensitive to odors that we do not perceive.

According to your study, your canine friend can use his highly developed sense of smell to take blood samples from people with cancer to an accuracy of almost 97%. This discovery may lead to new inexpensive and non-invasive screening approaches for the disease. .

Dogs have odor receptors 10,000 times more accurate than those of humans, which makes them extremely sensitive to odors that we do not perceive.

"Although cancer can not be cured, early detection offers the best hope," said Heather Junqueira, senior researcher at BioScentDx, a US-based health care company. "A very sensitive test to detect cancer could save thousands of lives and change the way the disease is treated," he said.

For the study, the team used a form of clicker training to teach four Beagles the distinction between normal blood serum and samples of patients with malignant lung cancer.

Although one beagle – dubbed Snuggles – is not motivated, the other three correctly identified 96.7% more lung cancer samples and 97.5% normal samples.

"This work is very exciting as it paves the way for new research in two ways, both of which could lead to new tools for detecting cancer," said Junqueira.

"One uses the detection of canine odor as a method of cancer screening and the other is to determine the biological compounds that dogs detect, then to design cancer screening based on these compounds, "he said.

The results will be presented at the annual meeting of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in Florida. The team plans to use canine scent detection to develop a non-invasive way to screen for cancer and other life-threatening diseases.

Indo-Asian Information Service