He explained: Can dogs be trained to sniff out Covid-19?

Six dogs, a mix of labrador and cocker spaniel, will be trained to identify the infection from the samples collected in the coronavirus patients of NHS staff in hospitals in London. (Getty Images)

The uk government has allocated a sum of more than $ 500,000 to a specialized team of researchers who will work to find out if dogs can detect COVID-19. The goal is to see if dogs can be trained to identify humans with the novel coronavirus before symptoms appear.

“This is going to establish if it could be used as a potential new non-invasive, early warning of a measure to detect coronavirus in the future,” the government of the united kingdom said.

“Bio-detection dogs detect specific cancers, and we believe that this innovation could provide for fast results as part of our broad strategy of proof,” in the uk, the Minister for Innovation, Lord Bethell, said.

Dogs and COVID-19: The trial

In the first phase of the study, the researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), in collaboration with Medical Detection Dogs and the University of Durham will determine if the dogs are able to detect the disease in humans from their scent, even in cases where the infection is asymptomatic.

Six dogs, a mix of labrador and cocker spaniel, will be trained to identify the infection from the samples collected in the coronavirus patients of NHS staff in hospitals in London. If the trial gathers enough evidence, the trained dogs will be used to carry out the rapid detection of the people who come to the uk from abroad.

But why the dogs?

Dogs are already used in the detection of the presence of bombs, drugs and explosives in places like airports. For a 2015 article published in the Frontiers in Veterinary Science, dogs are very sensitive canine olfactory sensory system can detect some chemicals in concentrations as low as parts per trillion, that is, “of the three orders of magnitude more sensitive than the currently available tools that reliably identify substances in concentrations of parts per million or billion of dollars.”

According to the Medical Detection Dogs, dogs’ sense of smell is high due to the complex structure of your nose, which contains more than 300 million receptors for smell, compared with more than $ 5 million in humans. In addition, it is possible that as much as 30 percent of the dogs brain is dedicated to analysing odour.

In addition, taking into account the different diseases have a unique odor, specialist dogs can be trained to detect in humans. More than 10 years of research collected by Medical Detection Dogs demonstrates that dogs can display up to 250 people per hour and can be trained to detect disease odours, which is equivalent to the dilution of one teaspoon of sugar in two Olympic swimming pools. Therefore, a highly infectious disease, such as COVID-19, training dogs to detect the disease can get to the screen of scores of individuals quickly.

Professor James Logan, principal investigator for the work and the Head of the Department of Disease Control at LSHTM, said, “Our previous work has shown that malaria has a particular smell, and with Medical Detection Dogs, we have successfully trained dogs to accurately detect the malaria. This, combined with the knowledge that the respiratory illness that can change the body odor, it makes us in the hope that the dogs can also detect COVID-19.”

How do dogs detect odors?

Tissues infected with pathogens release unique volatile biomarkers that become a part of a disease volatile organic compounds (Voc) of the firm. These volatile organic compounds that are emitted by the human body in exhaled air, urine, sweat or feces may reflect the metabolic condition of the person. When infected by an infectious disease or metabolic disease, this smell changes, that the trained dogs may be able to detect. According to a review published in the Journal of the Biochemistry of disease-specific Vocs can be used as diagnostic olfactory biomarkers of infectious diseases, metabolic diseases, genetic disorders, and other types of diseases.

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Therefore, the dogs can be trained to detect these biomarkers by using its sensory system olfactory. According to the aforementioned 2015 paper, in some cases, dogs have been able to detect diseases in exhaled air, which has the lowest known concentrations of VOCS.

What other diseases can dogs detect?

Previous research has shown that dogs can be used to detect diseases such as malaria, prostate cancer, diabetes, Parkinson’s disease and breast cancer. Medical Detection Dogs is working with researchers from Imperial College London to detect the odor of a specific bacterium.

In the case of Parkinson’s disease, uk researchers are working on a study to determine if dogs can detect the disease, possibly years before the onset.

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