Astra
Moderator
Bowel cancer may be identified in future by dogs, with a laboratory breakthrough by Japanese researchers showing that a dog can scent bowel cancer in breath and stool samples as accurately as high-tech diagnostic tools.
Researchers led by Hideto Sonoda at Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan, used the specially-trained female black Labrador to carry out 74 “sniff tests” over a period of several months. Each of the tests comprised five breath or stool samples, only one of which was cancerous.
The scientists tried to throw the dog off the scent by including in the samples people with bowel polyps, which are benign but are also a possible precursor of bowel cancer. Six percent of the breath samples, and 10 percent of the stool samples, came from people with other gut problems, such as inflammatory bowel disease, ulcers, diverticulitis, and appendicitis.
The dog performed as well as a colonoscopy, a technique in which a fiber-optic tube with a camera on the end is inserted into the rectum to look for suspect areas of the intestine. It correctly spotted which samples were cancerous and which were not in 33 out of 36 breath tests, equal to 95 percent accuracy, and in 37 out of 38 stool tests (98 percent accuracy). It performed especially well among people with early stage disease, and its skills were not disrupted by samples from people with other types of gut problems.
Using dogs for this purpose is expensive, but welcomed as it is non-invasive and accurate. The dog in this experiment was initially trained for water rescue in 2003 and then began training as a cancer detector in 2005. Every time she correctly distinguished a cancer sample, she was allowed to play with a tennis ball. Previous research has also found that dogs can sniff out bladder, lung, ovarian and breast cancer.
Researchers led by Hideto Sonoda at Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan, used the specially-trained female black Labrador to carry out 74 “sniff tests” over a period of several months. Each of the tests comprised five breath or stool samples, only one of which was cancerous.
The scientists tried to throw the dog off the scent by including in the samples people with bowel polyps, which are benign but are also a possible precursor of bowel cancer. Six percent of the breath samples, and 10 percent of the stool samples, came from people with other gut problems, such as inflammatory bowel disease, ulcers, diverticulitis, and appendicitis.
The dog performed as well as a colonoscopy, a technique in which a fiber-optic tube with a camera on the end is inserted into the rectum to look for suspect areas of the intestine. It correctly spotted which samples were cancerous and which were not in 33 out of 36 breath tests, equal to 95 percent accuracy, and in 37 out of 38 stool tests (98 percent accuracy). It performed especially well among people with early stage disease, and its skills were not disrupted by samples from people with other types of gut problems.
Using dogs for this purpose is expensive, but welcomed as it is non-invasive and accurate. The dog in this experiment was initially trained for water rescue in 2003 and then began training as a cancer detector in 2005. Every time she correctly distinguished a cancer sample, she was allowed to play with a tennis ball. Previous research has also found that dogs can sniff out bladder, lung, ovarian and breast cancer.
