Dogs can sniff out malaria, study shows
New research shows that sniffer dogs can diagnose malaria quickly and accurately, even when people do not exhibit any symptoms.
Malaria was responsible for 445,000 global deaths in 2016, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). In total, 216 million infections were registered worldwide that year.
In the United States, doctors diagnose about 1,500 cases of malaria each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Although the number of infections is relatively small, a delay in diagnosis is the primary cause of death among people with malaria in the U.S. Currently, a person's physical symptoms determine diagnosis, but, ideally, the CDC recommend that laboratory tests — such as microscopic analyses of blood smears — should confirm the symptoms.
New research, however, shows that dogs can diagnose the infection quickly, accurately, and in a noninvasive way. Steven Lindsay, a public health entomologist at the Department of Biosciences at Durham University in the United Kingdom, is the lead investigator of the new study.
Lindsay summarized the findings at the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) Annual Meeting, which this year took place in New Orleans, LA.
"People with malaria parasites generate distinct odors on their skin, and our study found dogs, which have an incredibly sensitive sense of smell, can be trained to detect these odors even when it's just on an article of clothing worn by an infected person."
Steven Lindsay
