Posted on 02/24/2021 5:01:54 PM PST by nickcarraway
If you own a dog, you already know they are masters of sniffing rears. Despite wielding powerful noses that can detect diabetes and even COVID-19, they often prioritize diving into the nearest posterior to make friends as opposed to putting them to good use, but you can’t stop them doing what they love.
Steering them in the right direction, researchers from Medical Detection Dogs have concluded a trial for scent dogs detecting the presence of prostate cancer and found they are highly sensitive to the most aggressive forms of the disease. The study, which is published in the journal PLOS ONE, aimed at assessing two dogs’ ability to detect lethal prostate cancer in urine samples. Florin and Midas, the genius sniffer dogs, were capable of identifying urine samples from patients with prostate cancer with high specificity, giving hope for a non-invasive cancer diagnostic test that can support the current blood tests.
The researchers even suggest that the dog’s incredible noses could be replicated in a synthetic device in the future.
“This is hugely exciting because one of the challenges of the PSA blood test, the test most widely used at the moment, is that other conditions can cause an elevated PSA but that does not necessarily mean you have cancer. The dogs in this study were able to differentiate between cancer and other prostatic diseases with good reliability,” said Dr Claire Guest, Medical Detection Dogs’ co-founder, in a statement.
“This additional information could support the PSA and would provide earlier, non-invasive, sensitive detection of clinically aggressive prostate cancers that would most benefit from early diagnosis, simply from a urine sample. This has enormous potential and in time the ability of the dogs’ nose could be translated to an electronic device.”
Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of lethal cancers in American men, with 1 in 8 men being diagnosed in their lifetime. Current diagnostic tests, such as prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening, can be unreliable, with many giving false-positive results leading to treatments that aren’t necessary.
Dogs have proven to be accurate at identifying various cancers, but this is the first double-blind study (meaning neither researchers nor dogs knew where the positive samples were) to stop trainers subconsciously biasing the dogs. After being given a carousel of samples to sniff and choose from, the dogs accurately identified samples from cancer patients 71 percent of the time and ignored samples from other patients 73 percent of the time. These are marked improvements over the 21-51 percent sensitivity of current PSA screening, suggesting that while the dogs are not practical for an accurate single test, usage alongside other methods could save countless lives.
Check out Florin being the good boy he is in the video below.
With the knowledge that dogs can detect molecules in the odor of cancer samples, the researchers are now attempting to pin down what it is they are smelling to create an artificial nose. These could be far more scalable for widespread testing, be made more accurate, and free up the dogs to play more fetch.
My crotch sniffing Lab would be a pefect candidate.
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That was my first thought, they stick their nose there so often they are bound to detect when something is wrong.
My chihuahua would need a ladder.
Now I know why my Greyhound Ginger’s nose was in my crotch!
“ the researchers are now attempting to pin down what it is they are smelling to create an artificial nose.”
But we have no idea what the world reveals to our pups when they are busy sniffing the ground.
Beware, cold nose!
I’ve got a queer buddy that will stick his finger up there for free. if there’s anything up there he’ll find it.
My dog smells like a dog.
One of my dogs used to ride in the car with his nose to the vent on the dashboard. If we got within 50 feet of a dog, he’d stand up and check it out.
They blinded the dogs!?!? How CRUEL!!!
Can POTUS sniff out prostate cancer or just young girls?
That would have been far more preferable than that damned biopsy regime. 12 samples? Seriously?
Holy farook, what were you, a training test dummy, I’ve never heard of so many.
Lol
IDK, six from each side, they said All clear, thank God, but still ... All for a 4.5 PSA result. Definitely BPH, though.
Ugh,glad it turned out ok, but dang.
Beat me to it.
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