Dogs detect cancer in humans

There's another reason why dogs can be considered man's best friend. They can detect cancer. This is according to a report in the European Respiratory Journal. Sniffing 100 samples, the report explains, dogs succeeded in detecting cancer in all but 29 cases merely by sniffing the patient's breath. In 400 other samples, the dogs gave just 28 false positives. 

LOS ANGELES (Catholic Online) - The findings don't suggest that dogs should be used to search for cancer victims, but rather that there is a marker in the breath of people who have cancer which means that a painless and inexpensive test could one day be developed to detect it.

More research is needed to determine what compounds the dogs have been detecting. Previous studies have shown that dogs, with then sharp sense of smell, can identify patients with certain types of cancer especially lung and colon cancers.

The test involved 50 healthy people and 25 patients with confirmed cases of lung cancer and another 50 with chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD).  The patients ranged across the stages from I to IV. Test went in phases in which the dogs, all household pets, were first trained, then introduced to samples for training.

After they were trained to lie down and sniff the samples, the real test was administered. The dogs showed a 71 percent success rate in detecting lung cancer, with the stage of the caner having little effect on the success rate. Some dogs performed better than others ranging from 68 percent in the worst case, to 84 percent in the best. The dogs also rated samples as a group and had a 72 percent accuracy rating.
 
Researches acknowledge that dogs are limited and cannot convey what kind of cancer they are detecting, but the research does hold promise of the development of electronic tests that can identify maker chemicals in the patients breath. Figuring out what those markers are, is the next step.

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