How man's best friend may play a part

Published on Wednesday 20 August 2008 22:46

THE ability of dogs to sniff out cancer has been the subject of many anecdotes from pet owners.

But it has also been the subject of much study. In 1989, researchers wrote a letter to the Lancet journal about a woman who claimed to have sought medical help as a result of her dog's interest in a skin lesion that turned out to be skin cancer.

Other dog owners have made similar claims about breast and lung cancer.

It is thought dogs' exceptional sense of smell could help them seek out cancers. In 2004, researchers in the UK revealed they had trained dogs to discriminate between urine from patients with bladder cancer and those without. Other research has suggested they can also identify prostate cancer from urine samples.

Some have suggested that dogs could be used to diagnose cancers instead of other invasive and costly tests, but experts still have concerns about how reliable they would be.