D
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ogs have a very sensitive sense of
smell. This can be useful in the medical world, as dogs are able to sniff out
certain diseases, including cancer.
Humans
have put dogs' remarkable sense of smell to use by training them to sniff out
explosives and narcotics. Their powerful noses can also detect viruses,
bacteria, and signs of cancer in a person's body or bodily
fluids.
In
this article, we look at the evidence behind dogs' abilities to smell and
identify different types of cancer, and how medical professionals can use dogs
to help diagnose the condition.
Can dogs smell cancer?
Dogs
can detect cancer odor signatures in a person's skin, urine, and sweat.
Research
suggests that dogs can detect many types of cancers in humans.
Like
many other diseases, cancers leave specific traces, or odor signatures, in a
person's body and bodily secretions. Cancer cells, or healthy cells affected by
cancer, produce and release these odor signatures.
Depending
on the type of cancer, dogs are able to detect these signatures in a person's:
·
skin
·
breath
·
urine
·
feces
·
sweat
Dogs
can detect these odor signatures and, with training, alert people to their
presence. People refer to dogs that undergo training to detect certain diseases
as medical detection dogs.
They
detect some substances in very low concentrations, as low as parts per
trillion, which makes their noses sensitive enough to detect cancer markers in a person's
breath, urine, and blood.
Which types of cancer can a dog smell?
Research
has shown that dogs can detect many types of cancer. For example, a case study
published in BMJ Case Reports describes how a
75-year-old man visited a doctor after his dog licked persistently at a lesion
behind the man's ear.
The
doctor performed diagnostic tests and confirmed malignant melanoma.
While
nobody had trained this person's dog to specifically detect cancer, most
research studies into canine cancer detection involve teaching individual dogs
to sniff out specific cancers.
Trained
dogs are able to detect colorectal cancer from
people's breath and watery stool with high levels of accuracy, even for early
stage cancers. The presence of gut inflammation or
noncancerous colorectal disease does not seem to affect dogs' ability to detect
these cancers.
Dogs
can also detect lung cancer from a person's
breath. One study found that a trained dog had a very high rate
of accuracy in distinguishing between the breath of people with and without
lung cancer.
They
are also able to detect ovarian
cancer from blood samples and prostate cancer from sniffing a person's urine.
One study found
that dogs trained only to detect breast cancer were
also able to detect melanoma and lung cancer, meaning that there may be a
common odor signature across different types of cancer.
Are dogs used in cancer research and diagnosis?
Diagnosing
cancer with dogs is low-risk and noninvasive.
The
fact that dogs can detect cancer has significant benefits for humans. Using
dogs to detect and diagnose cancer is a low-risk, noninvasive method.
Medical
detection dogs present few side effects and may offer advantages because they are mobile, can begin work
quickly, and can trace an odor to its source.
They
also have the potential for use in patient care settings or laboratories to
identify cancer in tissue samples from people with suspected cancers.
Dogs'
abilities may also help with developing machines that can reliably detect odor
signatures from cancer, such as electronic noses.
However,
research is still underway and the effectiveness and reliability of canine
cancer detection requires further research.
Summary
Dogs
have an incredibly sensitive sense of smell that can detect the odor signatures
of various types of cancer. Among others, they can detect colon cancer, prostate cancer, breast cancer, and
melanoma by sniffing people's skin, bodily fluids, or breath.
Researchers
are currently exploring the possibility of using specially trained medical
detection dogs in the diagnosis and tracking of cancer.
Canine
cancer detection is a simple, noninvasive procedure with potentially fewer side
effects for people. However, further investigation is necessary to validate
this method for use in clinical practice.
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