Dogs able to sniff out cancer, say researchers

Published on 24/09/2004 13:00

DOGS can be trained to sniff out bladder cancer from patients’ urine, researchers claimed today.

Six dogs were trained to pick out urine samples of patients with bladder cancer from those of people with other diseases and healthy individuals.

The researchers hope the findings will be useful in identifying specific chemicals that are released by cancer cells, leading to the development of new diagnostic tests.

Several anecdotal stories have claimed that dogs have been able to smell cancer on their owners, mostly from moles which turned out to be skin cancer.

In the new study, published in the British Medical Journal, the dogs - a mongrel, a labrador, a papillon and three cocker spaniels - were trained over seven months to discriminate between the different types of urine sample.

They were also taught to ignore blood in the samples.

For the final tests each dog was offered a set of seven urine samples, including one bladder cancer sample.

The dogs identified their chosen sample by lying down next to it, with each dog doing nine separate tests.

As a group, the dogs correctly selected bladder cancer samples on 22 out of 54 occasions.

The spaniels performed best, with two getting five out of nine tests correct and the other getting four.

The average success rate was 41 per cent, compared with the 14 per cent that would have been expected by chance alone.