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tumour.
What they are smelling are the "volatile molecules" given off by cells when they become
cancerous. Some studies suggest dogs can be 93% accurate. Others suggest they can detect
very small tumours before clinical tests can. And yet more
studies have produced mixed
results.
Does cancer smell?
At Milton Keynes University Hospital, a small team has recently
begun to collect human
urine samples to test dogs' ability to detect the smell of prostate cancer. The patients had
symptoms such as difficulty urinating or a change in flow,
which could turn out to be
prostate, bladder or liver cancer.
Rowena Fletcher, head of research and
development at the hospital, says the role of the
dogs - which have been trained by Medical Detection Dogs -
is to pick out samples that
smell of cancer. Further down the line, a clinical test will show if the dogs'
diagnosis is
correct. She says the potential for using dogs in this way is far-reaching - even if it is not
practical to have a dog in every surgery.
"We hope one day that there could be an electronic machine on every GP's
desk which
could test a urine sample for diseases by smelling it," she says. "But first we need to pick up
the pattern of what the dogs are smelling."
And that's the key. Dogs can't tell us what their noses are detecting, but scientists believe
that different cancers could produce different smells, although some might also be very
similar.
Electronic noses
Lab tests to understand what these highly-trained dogs are smelling could then inform the
development of 'electronic noses' to detect the same molecules. These might then give rise
to better diagnostic tests in the future. The potential for using smell to test for a wide range
of diseases is huge, Ms Fletcher says.
Bacteria, cancers and chronic diseases could all have their
own odour - which may be
imperceptible to only the most sensitive humans, but obvious to dogs. It may be possible in
the future to use disease odours as the basis for a national screening programme or to test
everybody at risk of a certain cancer in a particular age group.
However, there are fewer than 20 dogs in the UK trained to detect cancer at present.