Trained sniffer dogs can detect if someone has lung cancer with a remarkable degree of accuracy, German researchers reveal today.
Dogs were even able to detect the disease when patients had been smoking – or when they had other lung disease, according to a study in the European Respiratory Journal. Dogs were even able to detect the disease when patients had been smoking – or when they had other lung disease, according to a study in the European Respiratory Journal.
Dogs may provide the answer to the problem of detecting the disease early and simply, researchers say.
And while scientists have been unable to identify the chemicals that would identify the disease – known as volatile organic compounds – dogs proved able to do so in the research at Schillerhoehe Hospital, near Stuttgart, Germany.
Some 220 volunteers, including patients with lung cancer and other lung diseases, helped in the project.
The dogs sniffed 500 samples and identified 71 per cent of the lung cancer cases presented to them. They also correctly identified 93 per cent of the samples that were free of cancer.
And their choices were correct even when breath was mixed with tobacco smoke, food smells and drug smells.
The scientists say the findings prove there is a chemical that would identify lung cancer.
Researcher Thorsten Walles said: "In the breath of patients with lung cancer, there are likely to be different chemicals to normal breath samples and the dogs’ keen sense of smell can detect this difference at an early stage of the disease.
"Our results confirm the presence of a stable marker for lung cancer. This is a big step forward in the diagnosis of lung cancer, but we still need to precisely identify the compounds observed in the exhaled breath of patients."
He added: "It is unfortunate that dogs cannot communicate the biochemistry of the scent of cancer!”
Canine scent detection in the diagnosis of lung cancer: Revisiting a puzzling phenomenon. Rainer Ehmann, Enole Boedeker, Uwe Friedrich, Jutta Sagert, Jürgen Dippon, Godehard Friedel, Thorsten Walles. European Respiratory Journal DOI: 10.1183/09031936.00051711
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