Dogs May Be Able to Smell Cancer
Trained Dogs Sniffed Out Lung, Breast Cancers in Experiment
Jan. 12, 2006 -- Cancer may carry a scent that dogs can smell, a California study shows.
Researchers trained five dogs to identify breath samples from people with and without lung cancer or breast cancer.
The dogs were almost always right in sniffing out who did or didn't have cancer, write the researchers.
They included Michael McCulloch, LAc, MPH. He works at the Pine Street Foundation, a nonprofit group in San Anselmo, Calif., that focuses on cancer patients and their treatment decisions.
The study will be published in the March issue of Integrated Cancer Therapies.
Training Dogs to Spot Cancer
McCulloch and colleagues trained five dogs -- three Labrador retrievers and two Portuguese water dogs -- for the study.
The dogs included males and females that were 7 to 18 months old and had had basic obedience training.
The researchers trained the dogs to smell the difference between breath samples of people with and without lung or breast cancer. The breath samples were made by having each patient breathe deeply into a special tube. The dogs were exposed only to the breath samples, not the patients
During training, the dogs' accuracy was rewarded with food.
The Scent of Cancer
McCulloch's team had heard anecdotal reports of dogs detecting cancer in people. Dogs have an extremely keen sense of smell, picking up odors people don't notice. Just watch a dog trot along a sidewalk with its nose to the ground, sniffing everything in its path.
Is cancer sniffable? Not for people but maybe for dogs, McCulloch's study suggests.
A host of chemicals are involved in cancer, and scientists are working to create lab tests that flag fledgling cancers. So far, that goal has often been out of reach.
Maybe dogs would do better, McCulloch and colleagues reasoned. They set out to see if dogs can be trained to smell cancer. If so, dogs might improve early cancer detection, which can improve survival.
Fido Smells Cancer
The big challenge came two or three weeks after training. One at a time, the dogs were led into a room full of breath samples they hadn't sniffed before.