A study in Britain revealed that some dogs have special sniffing power that can detect cancer. The Medical Detection Dogs include these dogs to determine its efficacy and to prove canine's ability to accurately smell illnesses.
Because of her curiosity and excitement to random scents, Lucy, a mix between Labrador Retriever and Irish Water Spaniel, failed her school guide training and has unceremoniously been kicked out. The owners who highly believe in their pet's ability repurpose her with developing the best skill instead.
Amazingly, over the next seven years, talented Lucy has learned the art of sniffing including bladder, kidney and prostate cancer. CNN reports that she has been doing way better compared with some lab tests when detecting cancer with an astonishing 95% accuracy rate.
Because of this one-of-its-kind breakthrough, Lucy is now a part of the largest cancer canine detection clinical trial. To check their discernment abilities, the experiment conducted by the Medical Detection Dogs allowed eight potential dogs to sniff out 3000 urine samples obtained from patients of the National Health Service.
CEO of Medical Detection Dogs Claire Guest recalled how her fox red Labrador Daisy caught her breast cancer six years ago. "She kept staring at me and lunging into my chest. It led me to find a lump," she said. According to experts, because the tumor was embedded deeply, she would have been in an advanced stage the moment she feels it herself. "Had it not been drawn to my attention by Daisy, I'm told my prognosis would have been very poor," she said.
Dogs' powerful noses are not only 60 times better than humans but also have a secondary smelling device known as the Jacobson's organ. Because of this, trained dogs are able to detect scent of volatile organic compounds - cancer's unique smell.
Researchers of this current study aim to ensure that dogs are detecting cancer and not just old age or other signs. Guest said that if the study continues to reveal positive results, then animal-detecting cancer will soon be part of the diagnostic procedure (not entirely replace it). Or scientists can develop an electronic nose copied from dogs' noses, which Guest claimed is "very feasible."
