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Researchers at the University of Durham (UK) have found that dogs can smell malaria on sock samples worn by infected children, a finding that could lead to the first "quick and non-invasive" screening "of this disease. deadly
"Although our investigations are at an early stage, we have shown that dogs can be trained to detect people infected with malaria by their odor with a high degree of accuracy," said lead author Steve Lindsay .
The team led by Lindsay hopes dog tracking can "help stop the spread of malaria between countries and allow infected people to be screened early and treated quickly".
"This could be a non-invasive way of detecting diseases at entry points in the same way that dogs usually use to detect fruit or drugs at airports," said the scientist.
The research, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, focused on the study of nylon socks of apparently healthy children aged 5 to 14 in a region of The Gambia.
The sock samples were transported to the UK, where two dogs, a Golden Retriever labrador, Lexi, and a farmer, Sally, were trained to distinguish between the odor of children infected with malaria and that of others in good health.
A total of 175 sock samples were analyzed, including those from 30 children with malaria and 145 children not affected by this disease.
The dogs were able to correctly identify 70% of the malaria-infected samples and were able to correctly identify 90% of the samples without parasites of this disease.
According to the latest World Malaria report from the World Health Organization (WHO), there would have been 216 million cases of malaria in 2016, an increase of five million over the previous year. previous year, while there would have been 445,000 deaths.
Another of the study's lead authors, Claire Guest, said the findings of this report are "extremely exciting for the future," because if they are confirmed, this is an extremely accurate and non-invasive test .
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