Sally and Lexi a labradorand a Labrador-Golden Retriever cross, are now able to detect the peculiar smell of malaria on clothing. Both were trained by the British association Medical Detection Dogs, which has just presented the results of this world first attempt to detect a parasitic disease. “Our dogs were able to correctly identify 70% of the samples infected with malaria and 90% of the samples free of malaria parasites” underlined Dr. Claire Guest, general manager of the association, who worked on this project in collaboration with the University of Durham (Great Britain).
The two dogs were trained to distinguish the smell of children infected with the malaria parasite from that of uninfected children by sniffing their socks, worn for 24 hours. After being worn, the socks were vacuum packed and sent from The Gambia in the UK to the Medical Detection Dogs laboratory.
“The goal is to find a rapid, non-invasive way to screen large numbers of people for malaria in order to prevent its spread to disease-free areas” insists the doctor. “And this challenge could well become a reality”.
Lexi is this week’s Bio Dog of the Week! Lexi spent Thurs evening demonstrating her malaria detection skills at an event hosted by @ARCTEC_LSHTM & @LSHTM. She stole the show with her amazing ability to identify children infected with the malaria parasite by sniffing their socks. pic.twitter.com/DxCWWGXUfw
— MedicalDetectionDogs (@MedDetectDogs) October 21, 2018
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