According to a new study, beagles can help in detecting lung cancer from human blood samples and more interestingly, with 97 percent accuracy. They can be trained to help detect lung cancer in humans.
The study was presented Monday at the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology conference in Orlando.
Researchers looked at how four beagles (all two years old) identified human blood samples either with or without lung cancer.
According to a statement, one of the dogs named Snuggles was “unmotivated to perform,” while the other three dogs were able to identify blood samples correctly with lung cancer.
They identified blood samples with lung cancer 96.7 percent of the time and normal blood samples 97.5 percent of the time.
Researchers at BioScentDx, pharmaceutical lab based in Florida, conducted the study.
The researchers trained the beagles to distinguish between blood samples from normal patients and lung cancer patients.
According to the statement. “The beagles were able to detect the differences because dogs have smell receptors that are 10,000 times more accurate than humans.”
Lead study author Heather Junqueira said that her findings could help invent new cancer-screening tools, which is important because early cancer detection means higher chances of survival.
“This work is very exciting because it paves the way for further research along two paths, both of which could lead to new cancer-detection tools,” explained Junqueira. She added, “One is using canine scent detection as a screening method for cancers, and the other would be to determine the biologic compounds the dogs detect and then design cancer-screening tests based on those compounds.”
