Could dogs help find COVID-19?
A team of researchers from the United Kingdom is putting forth an intriguing proposition: Imagine if dogs could help find COVID-19?
Late last month, a team of researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), the registered charity Medical Detection Dogs, and Durham University, all in the U.K., announced an intriguing new initiative.
The team really wants to explore the potential of using dogs to find COVID-19 in people who may have developed the disease.
This idea came from the actual fact that canines are very adept at picking right up on subtle signs of illness thanks to their acute sense of smell.
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Actually, some researchers have even suggested that dogs can detect the existence of lung cancer in clinical samples, and that they could be better at it than doctors’ “innovative technology.”
Also, the same research team that kickstarted the existing initiative has discovered that dogs are capable of “sniffing out” infectious diseases, particularly malaria.
“Our previous work demonstrated that dogs can detect odors from humans with a malaria infection with extremely high accuracy - above the World Health Organization [WHO] standards for a diagnostic,” says Prof. James Logan, head of the Department of Disease Control at LSHTM.
Dogs ‘could revolutionize’ diagnostics
The researchers are currently crowdfunding their initiative to try to train medical detection dogs to screen persons for COVID-19.
The scientists acknowledge the fact that it is unclear whether COVID-19 reaches all detectable in a person’s body odor. However, predicated on their understanding of other respiratory conditions, they hypothesize that it's.
“It’s start for COVID-19 odor detection. We have no idea if COVID-19 includes a specific odor yet, but we know that other respiratory diseases change our body odor so you will find a chance that it does,” explains Prof. Logan.
“And if it does dogs should be able to identify it. This new diagnostic tool could revolutionize our response to COVID-19.”
- Prof. James Logan
The researchers propose that especially trained medical detection dogs could supplement your time and effort to screen for COVID-19 over time.
Trained dogs might be able to sniff up to 250 people per hour, providing an easy and noninvasive screening method.
Dogs may ‘sniff out’ asymptomatic cases
The researchers make clear that the dogs’ training would involve getting them to sniff odor samples from people with COVID-19 and teaching them to discern the smells linked to the disease.
They also remember that dogs can identify who is unwell because they are incredibly proficient at sensing even small changes in skin temperature. Therefore, the dogs may be able to immediately tell who includes a fever.
If successful, the investigators assume that medical detection dogs might be able to screen for the respiratory disease after only 6 weeks of training.
In the long run, the scientists remember that specially trained dogs could possibly be of service in spaces such as for example airports, where they might “sniff out” travelers and also require contracted SARS-CoV-2, the virus that triggers COVID-19.
“If the research is successful, we could use COVID-19 detection dogs at airports by the end of the epidemic to rapidly identify persons carrying the virus. This might assist in preventing the reemergence of the disease directly after we have brought today's epidemic in order,” suggests Prof. Steve Lindsay, from Durham University.
Commenting on the initiative, Claire Guest - co-founder and CEO of Medical Detection Dogs - says: “In principle, we’re sure dogs could find COVID-19. We are actually looking into how exactly we can safely catch the odor of the virus from patients and present it to the dogs.”
“The aim,” she says, “is that dogs should be able to screen anyone, including those people who are asymptomatic, and reveal whether they ought to be tested.”
Source: www.medicalnewstoday.com
