Trained dogs can sniff out COVID-19 positive samples with 96% accuracy. This is the conclusion reached by a study prepared by the University of Pennsylvania (United States). Furthermore, the research results have been published in the journal PLOS ONE.
According to Cynthia Otto, lead author of the study, this work is quite complex. In fact, dogs must be of specific breeds to detect the smell of the infection, as they have to rule out the background odors of all kinds of people (men, women and children of different ethnicities and geographies). Through this study, researchers have been able to discover that dogs are capable of detecting COVID-19. However, more training is required, it can be done very carefully and, if possible, with many samples.
Investigation Development
This team of researchers has years of experience in training dogs for medical screening, including some diseases such as ovarian cancer. Therefore, when the pandemic arrived, they did not hesitate to take advantage of this historic moment to design a coronavirus detection study.
Otto worked in collaboration with coronavirus expert Susan Weiss to process some of the samples in the lab to inactivate the virus. In this way, the dogs could safely sniff the samples.
On the other hand, the study used eight Labradors and a Belgian Malinois that had not previously carried out detection work. First, the researchers trained it to recognize a distinctive odor, a synthetic substance known as a universal detection compound. They then used a ‘scent wheel’ with 12 different samples, rewarding the dog when they responded to the sample containing the compound.
Afterward, the team of researchers began training them to respond to urine samples from SARS-CoV-2-positive patients and discern positive from negative samples. Negative samples were subjected to the same inactivation treatment as positive samples so that pets were not in danger.
Study results
By processing the results, the researchers found that after three weeks of training, all nine dogs were able to easily identify SARS-CoV-2 positive samples with 96% accuracy. However, their sensitivity or ability to avoid false negatives was lower.
The main conclusions of the study, in addition to confirming that there is a SARS-CoV-2 odor that dogs can detect, were that dog training should involve a large number of diverse samples and that dogs should not be repeatedly trained with samples from a single individual.
In addition, according to scientists, this research can not only be applied to SARS-CoV-2, but also to other diseases (such as cancer) that are difficult to detect.
