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Alternative diagnostics Shepherds can smell breast cancer tumors
It has long been known that dogs have a highly sensitive sense of smell. Researchers have now found in a study that the four-legged can thus also detect breast cancer in women. According to scientists, this method could revolutionize the diagnosis of breast cancer.
Very pronounced sense of smell
Dogs have a particularly strong sense of smell. Therefore, they are among others trained by the police to explosives or drug detection dogs. Also in the medical field, the four-legged are used. Among other things, they can warn against diabetes in diabetes. In addition, some of the animals are able to sniff out cancer, for example, breast cancer, as French researchers now report.
A new study showed that specially trained German shepherds can sniff breast cancer in women. (Image: Everst / fotolia.com) Dogs smell diseases
The sense of smell of dogs is much more pronounced than that of humans. The animals have - depending on the breed - sometimes over 200 million olfactory cells, the human being only five million.
Years ago, scientific research revealed clues that the four-legged friends could smell diseases with their fine nose.
For example, researchers from Austria reported that dogs can smell lung cancer. And Japanese scientists found that they can sniff colorectal cancer.
A study at the Curie Institute in Paris showed that shepherd dogs can detect breast cancer with their highly sensitive sense of smell with almost absolute certainty.
Two shepherd dogs trained for half a year
As the news agency AFP reports, the method is simple, inexpensive and requires no medical intervention.
According to the scientists involved, it could revolutionize the diagnosis of breast cancer, especially in areas or countries where normal mammography is not available.
According to the agency, for the study, two shepherds - Thor and Nykios - were trained for six months to sniff out the specific odor of cancer patients on bandages previously worn with direct breast contact.
The researchers are said to have been guided by numerous scientifically unannounced reports that dogs had been diagnosed with cancer by their owners.
It was only last fall that the case of a woman from Britain whose dog had sniffed her breast tumor had been reported.
Hit rate was 100 percent
For the current study, bandages of 31 cancer patients were collected. The two four-legged friends, with the help of German shepherd expert Jacky Experton, learned to internalize the odor differences between this material and the corresponding substances worn by women without cancer.
For the next round, the researchers again collected dressings from 31 women with cancer, but from others, other than those in the first round. In addition, three times as many dressing materials with the odor of non-cancer patients were included in the study.
The dogs managed 28 correct hits in the first smell test. In the second attempt, the hit rate was one hundred percent.
Sometimes very simple remedies can help
As Amaury Martin of the Curie Institute said, modern technology is in many cases very efficient, "but sometimes simpler, more obvious things can help".
According to the information, it was to be examined with the attempt, whether the "conventional wisdom" in "real science" could be transferred.
The study will now be continued with more patients and two additional dogs in a new clinical trial. The experts assume that one day the animals can be replaced by sophisticated odor machines.
Experton considers it unlikely that the trained dogs could fall outside the laboratory atmosphere on strangers.
As stated in the AFP message, such tests would be conducted in a "highly specific environment". Therefore, striking on certain odors as soon as the four-legged animals were in a different environment. (Ad)