Growing body of research says dogs really can smell cancer

Growing body of research says dogs really can smell cancer
2011 08 18

By Sabriya Rice | CNN.com

A new study adds to the body of research suggesting that "man’s best friend" may actually be able to smell cancer.

Researchers in Germany found that dogs were able to pick up on the scent of organic compounds linked to the presence of lung cancer in the human body, and that their keen sense of smell may be useful for the early detection of the disease.

Four family dogs – two German shepherds, one Australian shepherd and one Labrador retriever – smelled test tubes containing breath samples of 220 patients, both those with lung cancer and those without it. The dogs were trained to lie down in front of the test tubes where they smelled lung cancer and touch the vial with their noses. According to the study, the dogs successfully identified lung cancer in 71 out of 100 patients with the disease.

And that’s not all. Researchers also tested patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. “COPD is quite common in patients with lung cancer and we were not sure if the dogs could tell the difference between both diseases,” explains Enole Boedeker, an author on the study who practices general thoracic surgery in Stuttgart, Germany. “The dogs could recognize the cancer sample as easily as between the breath samples of the healthy study participants,” Boedeker says. The study is published in the European Respiratory Journal.

This isn’t the first study to use dogs’ heightened sense of smell to identify disease in humans. Over the years researchers have theorized that cancer may actually have a detectable scent - cancer cells may produce chemical compounds that circulate throughout the body and can be breathed out of the lungs in a gaseous form. The use of canine scent to detect these compounds has shown promise in sniffing out breast cancer, bowel cancer, colon cancer, COPD and lung cancer, and even type 1 diabetes.

“This is probably the most sophisticated study I’ve seen on this topic,” says Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society. Lichtenfeld has been following research on sniffer dogs and blogged about the topic for ACS. “More and more studies are reinforcing the possibility that this is very real,” he says.

But don’t expect to see Fido in the office the next time you visit the doctor; the future clinical implications remain unknown.

“We’ve seen this happen enough to suggest there are compounds in the breath of patients with cancer that could provide an early warning about he presence of cancer in the body, but we still do not know exactly what those compounds are,” Lichtenfeld says. “We can’t pick out what the dogs smell.”

Researchers say sniffer dogs are a promising “detection device,” but more studies are needed to help identify the specific detectable markers in order to create screening methods.

“Unfortunately,” the study authors conclude, “dogs cannot communicate the biochemistry of the scent of cancer.”

Article from: cnn.com

Share |

Latest News from our Front Page

So It Begins: Darpa Sets Out to Make Computers That Can Teach Themselves
2013 06 18
The Pentagon’s blue-sky research agency is readying a nearly four-year project to boost artificial intelligence systems by building machines that can teach themselves — while making it easier for ordinary schlubs like us to build them, too. When Darpa talks about artificial intelligence, it’s not talking about modeling computers after the human brain. That path fell out of favor among computer ...

Atacama Humanoid: Stanford-Geneticist Says Specimen "not worth scrutiny"
2013 06 18
The documentary SIRIUS has intrigued and shocked many, and has stirred debate about the scientific findings regarding the ’Atacama Humanoid’. Recently, daily German science news site GreWi.de followed up with Dr. Garry Nolan, the Stanford geneticist that headed the investigation into the mummified remains. grenz|wissenschaft-aktuell reports: Since the documentary movie "Sirius" showed the first results of an investigation of a just 15 ...

The Illuminati Depopulation Agenda
2013 06 18
While the global elite construct underground bunkers, eat organic and hoard seeds in Arctic vaults; the global poor are being slowly starved thanks to high commodity prices and poisoned with genetically modified (GMO) food. Austerity measures aimed largely at the poor are being imposed on all the nations of the world. Weather events grow more deadly and brushfire wars more ...

Ron Paul on Syria: This Is How Vietnam and Iraq Started
2013 06 18
President Barack Obama’s pledge to initiate a limited operation in Syria will likely escalate into a full-blown war, with Americans supporting a rebel cause that is backed by al-Qaida, retired Texas Rep. Ron Paul is arguing. "The president has opened a can of worms that will destroy his presidency and possibly destroy this country. Another multibillion dollar war has begun," Paul ...

Google’s deep CIA and NSA connections
2013 06 18
The Western media is currently full of articles reporting Google’s denial that it cooperated in a government program to massively spy on American and foreign citizens by accessing data from Googles servers and those of other U.S. software companies. The mainstream media has, however, almost completely failed to report that Google’s denial, and its surface concern over ’human ...

More News »