Olfactory detection of cancer by trained sniffer dogs: A systematic review of the literature

Pirrone, Federica; Albertini, M.

doi:10.1016/j.jveb.2017.03.004

Cited by 70 publications

(70 citation statements)

References 99 publications

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“…Ability for distinguishing the probands is within the range of previous studies conducted on lung cancer detection by detection dogs. With regard to all articles published so far on canine detection of lung cancer in humans on the basis of breath odor, the mean sensitivity was 78%, whereas the mean specificity was 71.5% ( 3 ). The results of the studies differ substantially.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Proof of Concept: Are Detection Dogs a Useful Tool to Verify Potential Biomarkers for Lung Cancer?

et al. 2018

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Early and reliable diagnostic test is essential for effective therapy of lung cancer. Volatile organic compounds that are characteristic for cancer could serve as valuable biomarkers in cancer diagnosis. Both trace analytical and detection dog approaches give some evidence for the existence of such biomarkers. In this proof of concept, study dogs and trace analysis were implemented in combination to gain more information concerning cancer biomarkers. Two dogs were trained to distinguish between absorbed breath samples of lung cancer patients and healthy persons and succeeded with correct identification of patients with 9/9 and 8/9 and correct negative indications from of 8/10 and 4/10 samples from healthy individuals. A recent observational study found that breath samples from lung cancer patients showed an increase in 1-butanol, 2-butanone, 2-pentanone, and hexanal. Synthetic air samples were therefore fortified with these compounds and adsorbed to a fleece. Tested against breath samples from healthy probands, on presentation to the dogs these synthetic samples provoked an indication in three out of four samples. We were able to demonstrate that a combination of the natural nose of a dog and a trace analytic technique can be a valuable concept in the search for cancer biomarkers.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Proof of Concept: Are Detection Dogs a Useful Tool to Verify Potential Biomarkers for Lung Cancer?

et al. 2018

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“…Canine olfactive detection has proven its efficacy in numerous situations (explosives, drugs, bank notes…) including for early diagnosis of human diseases: various cancers, alert of diabetic or epileptic people in immediate alarm of crisis (1) The Nosaïs project, conducted by the UMES (Unité de Médecine de l'Elevage et du Sport) at Alfort school of veterinary medicine (France), has been set up in order to develop the scientific approach of medical detection dogs. The occurence of the COVID-19 pandemia led the Nosaïs team to start a multicentric study on the olfactive detection of SARS-CoV-2 positive people involving:…”

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confidence: 99%

Detection dogs as a help in the detection of COVID-19 Can the dog alert on COVID-19 positive persons by sniffing axillary sweat samples ? Proof-of-concept study

Grandjean

Sarkis²,

Tourtier³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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The aim of this study is to evaluate if the sweat produced by COVID-19 persons (SARS-CoV-2 PCR positive) has a different odour for trained detection dogs than the sweat produced by non COVID-19 persons. The study was conducted on 3 sites, following the same protocol procedures, and involved a total of 18 dogs. A total of 198 armpits sweat samples were obtained from different hospitals. For each involved dog, the acquisition of the specific odour of COVID-19 sweat samples required from one to four hours, with an amount of positive samples sniffing ranging from four to ten. For this proof of concept, we kept 8 dogs of the initial group (explosive detection dogs and colon cancer detection dogs), who performed a total of 368 trials, and will include the other dogs in our future studies as their adaptation to samples scenting takes more time.The percentages of success of the dogs to find the positive sample in a line containing several other negative samples or mocks (2 to 6) were 100p100 for 4 dogs, and respectively 83p100, 84p100, 90p100 and 94p100 for the others, all significantly different from the percentage of success that would be obtained by chance alone.We conclude that there is a very high evidence that the armpits sweat odour of COVID-19+ persons is different, and that dogs can detect a person infected by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

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“…This study supports the use of scent hounds to detect cancer in humans based on a specific odor and confirms the results of previous studies that have indicated that dogs can be rapidly trained to detect the pathophysiologic metabolic changes of cancers through olfaction. [13][14][15][16][17][18][19] Current early detection screening modalities have the…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Accuracy of Canine Scent Detection of Non–Small Cell Lung Cancer in Blood Serum

Junqueira¹,

Quinn²,

Biringer³

et al. 2019

The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association

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Canines are able to differentiate between serum samples taken from cancer patients and samples taken from normal controls. This study further supports the use of dogs as biomedical research tools for detection of cancer biomarkers. In particular, this study was designed to determine the accuracy of canines' ability to detect, by scent alone, lung cancer biomarkers in blood serum. Operant conditioning was used in the form of clicker training to train four beagles to distinguish, by scent alone, blood serum from malignant lung cancer patients when presented along with healthy controls in a double‐blind format. Non‐small cell lung cancer and healthy control blood serum samples were presented to 2‐year‐old beagles. Three dogs were able to correctly identify the cancer samples with a sensitivity of 96.7%, specificity of 97.5%, positive predictive value (PPV) of 90.6% and negative predictive value (NPV) of 99.2%. One of the dogs, Snuggles, was unmotivated to perform during training and tested with 80% specificity and 60% sensitivity. This study paves the way for a larger scale research project designed to explore the use of canine scent detection as a tool for detecting cancer biomarkers, ultimately leading to their identification. This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.

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Olfactory detection of cancer by trained sniffer dogs: A systematic review of the literature

Cited by 70 publications

References 99 publications

A Proof of Concept: Are Detection Dogs a Useful Tool to Verify Potential Biomarkers for Lung Cancer?

A Proof of Concept: Are Detection Dogs a Useful Tool to Verify Potential Biomarkers for Lung Cancer?

Detection dogs as a help in the detection of COVID-19 Can the dog alert on COVID-19 positive persons by sniffing axillary sweat samples ? Proof-of-concept study

Accuracy of Canine Scent Detection of Non–Small Cell Lung Cancer in Blood Serum

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