April 12, 2019.
A team of American researchers has successfully trained dogs to smell cancer in the blood with an accuracy of nearly 97%.
Dogs have 10,000 times more sense of smell than humans
Cancer kills millions of people every year. According to the WHO, it is the second leading cause of death in the world, responsible for one in six deaths. Fortunately, many cancers can be treated with surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy, especially if they are detected early enough.
It seems that now dogs can smell cancer. This is the conclusion of a team of American researchers from the company BioScentDx, who managed to train dogs to accurately detect cancer in the blood. They started from the premise that ” dogs have 10,000 times more potent scent receptors than humans, making them sensitive to smells that we ourselves cannot perceive “.
Towards accurate and inexpensive cancer screening
To conduct their study, they had four Beagle dogs sniff blood samples from people with malignant lung cancer and those who were not sick. Three of the four dogs have correctly identified lung cancer samples in 96.7% of cases and normal samples in 97.5% of cases.
This is, according to scientists, a decisive step forward, which would make it possible to develop an inexpensive and accurate cancer screening method without being invasive. Indeed, it would suffice to determine the biological compounds that dogs detect and then design cancer screening tests based on those compounds. ” Highly sensitive test for cancer could potentially save thousands of lives and change treatment for the disease “, Say the researchers.
Aurélie Giraud
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