Already able to detect the smell of certain cancers, Parkinson’s disease, malaria, or certain animal diseases (bovine pestivirosis, scabies), sniffer dogs can also spot the characteristic odor of Covid-19 affirmed last May the researchers of the Maison-Alfort Veterinary School who evaluated this technique of screening for covid among 335 people who came to get screened in two Parisian centers, as part of a study called Salicov AP-HP. In this month of August 2021, the method is put into practice in the Ehpads of Haut-Rhin and is already proving its worth, as underlined an AFP dispatch taken up by 20 minutes.
Dogs start to detect coronavirus in nursing homes
Faced with the increase in test requests and to reduce the burden on medical biology laboratories, the idea has indeed come to veterinarians and researchers to use the olfaction of dogs to detect patients with Covid-19.
For the test launched at the initiative of the Alfort Veterinary School, axillary sweat samples were collected from the participants by asking them to keep compresses under the armpits for two minutes. The compresses were then placed in jars and then sniffed by two different dogs. This detection was, of course, carried out blindly, without the dog owners knowing the results of the PCR tests. Of the 335 people tested, 109 were PCR positive, and the dogs discovered 97% of these results.
It is the same method which is currently put into practice at the Ehpad La Roselière in Kunheim, a dog called Pokaa exercises this profession of “coronavirus sniffer”, he is the first in France! The main objective of this method is to relieve the elderly from invasive PCR-type tests, even if for the time being, this type of examination always confirms the dog’s opinion.
The screenings in real conditions at the nursing home were a great success, the animal was able to detect 100% of symptomatic cases. Some people were also asymptomatic: the result is noticeably worse, while remaining interesting: 95% success. The advantage is that it would be able to detect the disease upstream, around 48 hours before the PCR can declare positive. According to the medical staff and trainers who supervise him, he would be able to identify all the variants known to date.
Covid-19 changes body odor
From the start of the pandemic, the Medical Detection Dogs (a British organization specializing in the training of “disease-detecting” dogs) had announced that it had also started training animals to detect the SARS-Cov-2 coronavirus.
Last August, the National Academy of Medicine and the Veterinary Academy of France published a statement to highlight the promising first results of several screening trials with dogs carried out in Hanover (Germany), Alfort and Strasbourg. The first results obtained by the researchers, using new scent tests of medical biology, showed that “sniffer” dogs trained for 2 to 3 weeks were “able to recognize a specific odor of Covid-19 corresponding to a set of organic compounds specific volatiles or other metabolic substances produced by the sick organism “emphasized the academicians.
To achieve this detection rate in nursing homes in the summer of 2021, the dogs were finally trained for 4 weeks at the Alfort Veterinary School. The teaching method is called Nosaïs-Covid19.
How it works ? Detecting a viral disease by relying on an animal’s flair is not easy. Yet as explained by Medical Detection Dogs (which works in conjunction with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Durham University, England), “we know that dogs are able to detect subtle abnormalities in an individual’s body temperature.“
“In addition, studies have shown that certain pathologies (and in particular respiratory conditions, such as Covid-19) modify body odor. Dogs can detect these changes, which exist even in an individual who is asymptomatic but carries the coronavirus.“Ultimately, the organization hopes that the properly trained dogs will be deployed in airports and public places, in order to limit the spread of the coronavirus.
In VIDEO: Meet the sniffer dogs
Sources: AFP dispatch, August 4, 2021, Salicoy AP-HP study
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