Trained dogs can sniff out malaria from a child's dirty sock

As many dogs owners know, their pets are in the business.

Now British and African scientists have used to treat you to death from a child's dirty sock.

The sock sniffing ability could be used to get rid of the disease.

It is also expected to lead to a rapid and non-invasive test for malaria.

But the dogs would be ideal to quickly screen the numbers of people in the world.

Principal Investigator Professor Steve Lindsay, in the Department of Biosciences, Durham University said: "People with malaria parasites can be trained to detect these diseases. when it's just an article of clothing worn by an infected person.

"While our findings are at an early stage, we have shown that they could be trained to detect malaria-infected people by their odds with a credible degree of accuracy.

"This could provide a non-invasive way of screening for the disease at the airport."

"This could help prevent the spread of malaria and make it more likely that people are infected with the parasitic malaria, receive antimalarial drug treatment for the disease."

The study used nylon socks to collect foot oder samples from apparently healthy children in the Upper River Region of The Gambia in West Africa.

The children were screened for parasitic malaria Plasmodium falciparum in their blood using a simple finger-prick test.

The medical detection of dogs in Milton Keynes, where the Lexi, Labrador-Golden Retriever crosses Lexi and Sally has been diagnosed in the United States.

A total of 175 sock samples were tested in those of all 30 malaria-positive children identified by the study and 145 uninfected children.

The dogs were able to correctly identify 70 percent of the malaria-infected samples.

The dogs were also able to identify 90 percent of the samples without malaria parasites.

Identifying people infected with malaria parasitic, but not having any symptoms, is important as they can be treated with antimalarial drugs and the spread of the disease can be prevented.

Sniffer dogs could provide a non-invasive, portable and rapid test for malaria diagnosis and would be particularly useful in cases where malaria parasites occur.

Confirmation of the disease would then be made by taking a finger-prick test of blood using a rapid diagnostic test.

Since the initial study Freya, a Springer Spaniel, has also been trained to detect malaria.

Study co-author Dr. Claire Guest, Chief Executive Officer of Medical Detection Dogs, said it has had "positive results training dogs to detect diseases including cancer and diabetes sugar changes by odour.

"This is the first time we have trained dogs to detect a parasite infection and we are delighted by these early results.

"The possible potential to train dogs to detect tropical diseases where diagnoses are poor, such as leishmaniasis and trypanosomiasis is huge.

"I believe that this study indicates that dogs have an excellent ability to detect malaria and whether they are infected with the parasite or have a high rate of infection.

"This is a reliable, non-invasive test and is extremely exciting for the future."

The World Health Organization said since 2000 six countries have been certified malaria free, with another 12 countries reporting that no malaria cases have originated within their borders.

But there are still an estimated 216 million cases of malaria in 2016, an increase of five million cases over the previous year and it costs 445,000.

Co-author Professor James Logan, head of the Department of Disease Control, at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said: "Worryingly, our progress in the control of malaria has stalled in recent years, so we desperately need innovative new tools. to help in the fight against malaria.

"Our results show that sniffer dogs could be a problem, but are still infectious, quicker and easier."

Co-author Professor Umberto D'Alessandro, Unit Director at the Medical Research Council Unit The Gambia at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine said: "Detecting malaria-infected but otherwise healthy people is a laborious and time-consuming process that requires collecting a blood sample to be processed in a well-equipped laboratory.

"New approaches to facilitating the identification of infected individuals would be greatly improved in malaria transmission.

"The opportunity to use trained dogs for this purpose is promising. It may be possible to identify people by their body odour. "

In future artificial odors could be developed to detect malaria parasites, but until then trained dogs could be useful at ports of entry.

However, they say that they are more likely to get infected with the disease than other people in the world.

The research was presented at the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene Annual Meeting in New Orleans.