Cancer Sniffing Dogs

by Aimee Amodio | More from this Blogger

10 Apr 2007 10:41 AM

Your four-legged best friend could someday save your life.

Since 1989, doctors have been collecting evidence that dogs can indeed sniff out cancer. The first published case involved a woman whose dog kept sniffing at a mole on her leg. Eventually she went to her doctor to discover that the mole was a malignant skin cancer! By 2004, doctors were able to train dogs to sniff out bladder cancer in patient urine samples.

In 2006, a study showed that dogs could detect lung cancer and breast cancer just by smelling a person's breath! After working with a trainer and samples from people with lung or breast cancer, the dogs were able to identify cancer in never-before-seen samples with up to 97% accuracy! Even when the cancers were only in the beginning stages, the trained cancer sniffing dogs could find the disease.

A dog's nose may be more sensitive than other breath scans like gas chromatography or mass spectrometry. Studies of canine sniffers think that dogs can find an odor that is only present in unbelievably small amounts -- like one part per trillion.

I remember reading a story -- I believe it was in a Chicken Soup For The Pet Lover's Soul book -- about a woman whose normally docile dog started pushing at her side. The dog's pushing dislodged a calcium deposit that had been covering up a cancerous tumor. Somehow, the dog had been able to smell the cancer beneath the calcium deposit that covered it from being picked up on regular tests.

Your doctor may not be hiring a cancer sniffing dog on as a new office partner any time soon, but as we learn more about how a dog's nose works, we may be able to adapt that talent for new cancer screening tests. Imagine the day when a simple breath test can tell your doctor if you have cancer or not!

Learn more about Aimee Amodio

Aimee is a fiction writer... dog lover... music lover...

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