Can Dogs Smell Prostate Cancer

Prostate Cancer Sniffer Dogs

How can dogs smell prostate cancer? In a research conducted by the Italy Humanitas Clinical and Research Centre, the researchers trained a pair of 3-year-old female German Shepherds to sense urine organic compounds sample specifically in prostate cancer patients. The urine samples were obtained from 900 human participants, where 360 of them have prostate cancer and 540 of them did not.

One of prostate cancer sniffer dogs marked an accuracy value of 98.7 percent in smelling prostate cancer, and the other German Shephards was 97.6 percent accurate, reported by researchers.

Prostate Cancer Sniffing Dogs Training

First the dog is trained to smell prostate cancer urine samples from healthy female and female with other variants of cancer. Follow by urine samples obtained from young healthy male then older healthy male. Next, urine gathered from those with prostate cancer. This training slowly trained the dog to sense prostate cancer trances and differentiate them apart.

After the trainings, the researchers screened the dogs by growing through all of the samples with the trained prostate cancer sniffing dogs from those men with prostate cancer which are being controlled in batches of six random samples. The researcher studying the results is unaware of which samples they were from men with prostate cancer.

This was not the initial study being conducted, similar study has been conducted in year 2011. A research affirmed that dogs can smell prostate cancer with a success rate 92% back then.

Currently, prostate cancer is diagnosed through blood tests, biopsies and physical examinations. By training dogs to sense prostate cancer is believe to be is a much inexpensive way for early detection of the prostate cancer. These dogs, which are specially trained, can be put to help the hospitals to sniff, not only cancer, but other infections or disease through urine samples.

These updated study offer further evidences that dogs have the ability to smell or sniff human cancer, which can be used as an supporting alternative to current diagnostic tests.