Sensitivity of Sniffer Dogs for a Diagnosis of Parkinson's Disease: A Diagnostic Accuracy Study

Gao, Chang‐Qing; Wang, Shan-Ni; Wang, Mei‐Mei; Li, Jingjing; Qiao, Jiao-Jiao; Huang, Juanjuan; Zhang, Xuxiang; Xiang, Yaqin; Xu, Qian; Wang, Junling; Liu, Zhenhua; Wang, Jiangang; Chen, Zhi‐Heng; Hu, Ping‐An; Song, Zhi; Gu, Shaojuan; Zhang, Ruxu; Lei, Lifang; Zhan, Ke-Bin; Long, Yi‐Ting; Zhang, Yang; Ye, Min; Zhong, Zichun; Liu, Yunbo; Zhang, Chen; Zheng-ming, HE; Fang, Xiang; Peng, Jian‐Guo; Wang, Chunyu; Xu, Hui; Xia, Bing‐Hua; Shen, Lu; Tang, Beisha; Zheng, Cui‐Wei; Li, Ya‐An; Guo, Jifeng

doi:10.1002/mds.29180

Cited by 10 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…al, a study that investigated levodopa in sebum secretions, it was determined that changes in sebum from PD-positive patients were not associated with this medication (39). In both Gao (26) and Rooney (27), it was determined that sensitivity and specificity findings were not influenced by drug usage of sample donors.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

From small to tall: breed-varied household pet dogs can be trained to detect Parkinson’s Disease

Holt,

Johnston

2024

Preprint

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Objective: Parkinson's Disease (PD) is a clinically diagnosed disease that carries a reported misdiagnosis rate of 10-20%. Recent scientific discoveries have provided evidence of volatile organic compounds in sebum that are unique to patients with PD. The purpose of this study was to determine if companion dogs could be trained to distinguish between sebum samples provided by PD-positive patients and PD-negative human controls. Methods: This was a randomized, handler-blind, controlled study. Twenty-three canines of varying breeds, ages, and environmental backgrounds were included. The two-year study period reported here was the final two years of a seven-year program which started in January of 2016. This study encompassed 200 total working session days from 2021 and 2022. Results: When averaged as a group over two years, the 23 dogs were 89% sensitive and 87% specific to an olfactory distinction between PD-positive and PD-negative human donor samples. Ten of the twenty-three dogs averaged 90% or higher in both sensitivity and specificity. In 161 separate instances, dogs were presented with both unique PD-positive and PD-negative samples (the dogs had not previously encountered any of the samples presented). For these first-time exposures, the 23 dogs collectively averaged 86% sensitivity and 89% specificity. When comparing the sensitivity and specificity of PD-positive samples from donors who reported levodopa usage to PD-positive samples from donors who reported no levodopa usage, the dogs showed no statistical difference in sensitivity or specificity at the 95% significance level, indicating levodopa usage is not a factor in PD canine detection. Other factors investigated as part of this study included sample donor gender, canine breed, age, duration of time in the program, and training. Conclusions: Companion dogs can be trained with reward-biased detection methodologies to distinguish between PD-positive and PD-negative donor sebum samples in a controlled setting. This study provides further evidence of one or more volatile organic compounds in the sebum of PD-positive patients that can be detected by canines. Summarily, study findings support the application of trained companion dogs for the screening of PD-positive and PD-negative samples in which numbers of samples are limited and the dogs are worked in short intervals, followed by recovery training.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

From small to tall: breed-varied household pet dogs can be trained to detect Parkinson’s Disease

Holt,

Johnston

2024

Preprint

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“…Sniffer dogs have been trained successfully to distinguish biological samples obtained from healthy and diseased individuals. They have been shown to identify patients with Parkinson’s disease [ 23 ], lung cancer [ 24 ], prostate cancer [ 25 ], ovarian cancer [ 26 ] and different infectious diseases [ 27 ] from samples such as urine, blood, serum, cell lines and bacterial cultures with very high sensitivity. Dogs can also be trained to alert to hypoglycemic periods in type 1 diabetics [ 28 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exhaled Biomarkers for Point-of-Care Diagnosis: Recent Advances and New Challenges in Breathomics

et al. 2023

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Cancers, chronic diseases and respiratory infections are major causes of mortality and present diagnostic and therapeutic challenges for health care. There is an unmet medical need for non-invasive, easy-to-use biomarkers for the early diagnosis, phenotyping, predicting and monitoring of the therapeutic responses of these disorders. Exhaled breath sampling is an attractive choice that has gained attention in recent years. Exhaled nitric oxide measurement used as a predictive biomarker of the response to anti-eosinophil therapy in severe asthma has paved the way for other exhaled breath biomarkers. Advances in laser and nanosensor technologies and spectrometry together with widespread use of algorithms and artificial intelligence have facilitated research on volatile organic compounds and artificial olfaction systems to develop new exhaled biomarkers. We aim to provide an overview of the recent advances in and challenges of exhaled biomarker measurements with an emphasis on the applicability of their measurement as a non-invasive, point-of-care diagnostic and monitoring tool.

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“…A recent prospective, diagnostic case-control study was conducted in China 28 . Three dogs trained in a laboratory were tested on sebum samples from PD medicated and drug naïve patients, and matched controls.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Since the dog is effectively the measuring instrument, it is important to provide full details of its training, calibration and testing which we describe fully. To simulate real operations, unlike Gao et al 28 , we did not use precisely matched control samples. However, since it is vital to minimise all possible confounding factors e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trained dogs can detect the odour of Parkinson’s Disease

Rooney,

Trivedi,

Sinclair

et al. 2023

Preprint

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A definitive diagnostic test for PD remains elusive, so identification of potential biomarkers may shed light on methods for diagnosis and facilitate early intervention. Excess sebum secretion and skin pathology are recognised symptoms of early PD. It is likely these result in a unique signature of volatile organic compounds that could be used to identify early stages of disease. Numerous medical conditions produce distinctive odours, and dogs have been trained to detect many of these. A single previous study, suggested that dogs can also be trained to detect Parkinson’s Disease. In this study, two dogs were trained to distinguish sebum swabs obtained from drug naïve, and medicated Parkinson’s patients from swabs from control participants. After 38-53 weeks of training on 205 samples (90 target and 115 control), the dogs were tested in a double-blind trial using 60 control and 40 target samples from drug-naïve patients. The dogs both showed high sensitivity (proportion of target samples found 70% and 80%) and specificity (proportion of control samples not alerted to 90% and 98%) of alerting response. This trial supports previous findings that dogs can be trained to reliably detect the odour of PD. We suggest there is a potential for dogs to achieve even higher accuracy with increased exposure and refined training methods and to detect early-stage PD, even prior to diagnosis, as well as hard to diagnose PD cases. Further exploration of the factors which affect dogs’ sensitivity and specificity and sample features which affect accuracy of discrimination are now required.

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Sensitivity of Sniffer Dogs for a Diagnosis of Parkinson's Disease: A Diagnostic Accuracy Study

Cited by 10 publications

References 24 publications

From small to tall: breed-varied household pet dogs can be trained to detect Parkinson’s Disease

From small to tall: breed-varied household pet dogs can be trained to detect Parkinson’s Disease

Exhaled Biomarkers for Point-of-Care Diagnosis: Recent Advances and New Challenges in Breathomics

Trained dogs can detect the odour of Parkinson’s Disease

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