COVID-19 check dog. Credit: Dominic Grandgen
Trained dogs will be able to find infected people COVID-19 According to the initial proof-by-concept study, sniffing their sweat.
This proof-of-concept study was conducted to evaluate if trained sniffer dogs could differentiate between respiratory COVD-19 positive individuals and sweat samples.SARS-CoV-2 PCR positive) and asymptomatic COVID-19 from negative individuals.
Two sites (Paris, France and Beirut, Lebanon) conducted the test, each with a similar training and testing protocol. A total of six sniffer dogs were involved in the test: three explosive detection dogs, two colon cancer detection dogs and one search and rescue dog.
177 people from five different hospitals were recruited for the study. Of the individuals, 95 cryptocurrencies were COVID-19 positive and 82 were asymptomatic.
COVID-19 negative. Sweat samples were taken from one underarm of each person.
Dog training sessions lasted between one and three weeks. Once trained, the dog had to randomly mark the COVID-19 positive sample in one of three or four olfactory cones (the other cone had at least one COVID-19 negative sample and had to mark between zero and two mocks). During the test session, a maximum of three COVID-19 positive samples can be used for one dog. Both the dog and its manager were blinded at the location of the COVID-positive sample.
COVID sniffing test. Credit: Dominic Grandgen
The success rate per dog (i.e., the number of appropriate signals divided by the number of tests) ranges from 76% to 100%. The estimated success rate was 95% higher than the success rate achieved by chance after removing the number of mocks from the lower bound calculations of the confidence interval.
These results provide some evidence that detection dogs are able to distinguish between sweat samples from COVID-19 individuals with symptoms and asymptomatic COVID-19 negative individuals. However, due to the limitations of this proof-of-concept study (using more than some COVID-19 samples
Once and potentially embarrassing bias), these results must be confirmed in a validation study.
Reference: “Can a detection dog warn COVID-19 positive individuals by sniffing a declarative sweat sample? Proof-C-Concept study” 10 December 2020, Plaza one.
DOI: 10.1371 / journal.pon.0243122
Funding: Diagnose, Sinopro Detection Dogs volunteered their dogs to participate in the study without any financial request. Diagnose, Sinopro Detection Dogs Provide Support for Writers in the Form of Salary [PM, MBF, AC, SR, KB], But there was no additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript. In addition, ICTS Europe, Biodiversity SAS, and Mario K9 also provided support in the form of authors’ salaries. [PM, GH, MI], But there was no additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are described in the ‘Author Contributions’ section.
Competition Interests: Diagnose, Sinopro Detection Dogs, ICTS Europe, Biodegradable SAS, and Mario K9 have provided support to the authors in the form of salaries. This does not change our compliance Plaza one Policies on data and content sharing. There are no patents, product products or marketing products associated with this research to disclose.
