It has been long known that dogs have amazing sniffing powers and are used to sniff out explosives, narcotics, and they are also known for their powers of sniffing out fake money.
A new research has been conducted where it is shown that dogs can detect lung and breast cancer through breath samples.
It has always been a wonder when there are devices or gadgets that were invented who have the ability to detect cancer in its earliest stages. It has always been a prime need to detect cancer in its early stages so that lives could be saved and the people who are suffering from cancer can be provided with good quality of life and now with dogs have the ability to sniff out cancer through breath samples in its earliest stages can provide an amazing help to the people who might have to go through the tough and prolonged treatment process with poor prognosis.
The researchers think that dogs would be the most important tool in recognizing tumor at a very early stage and the canines can pick up on the chemical differences that linger in the breath samples of an individual who is suffering from cancer.
The dogs that were trained to identify cancers at early stages were Labrador and the two Portuguese water dogs that were trained in three weeks by either laying or sitting after they have sniffed on the breath samples that were taken from the lung or breast cancer patients, while they were trained to ignore the healthy individuals.
These are ordinary household pets who have the power to sniff out cancers in individuals.
The research was conducted on a total of 169 breath samples that were collected in special tubes, out of which 55 patients were with lung cancer and 31 patients had breast cancer and about 83 people were healthy.
The cancer patients were the ones who were already being diagnosed through the conventional ways, either by CT scans or mammograms and were about to start the chemotherapy program. These samples to which the dogs identified the cancer patients were new and they were not exposed to them earlier during training.
It was shown that through the research that dogs were about 88 to 97 percent correct in identifying both early and late stage breast and lung cancers.
This study is yet to appear in March this year.
The best thing that will happen is that there will be a chance for more people to live a healthy life after the deadly cancers have been diagnosed at an early stage, as it is impossible to save a life when the cancers progress to advanced stages.
This ability of dogs with which they can detect cancer was discovered in 1989 and they were known to detect melanoma and bladder cancers.
The researchers are planning to start and develop the canine training centers where they can train dogs and can train them to detect different cancers.
The time the dogs took to detect cancer was very less, and the accuracy level that they gave was way high after such a short time of training.
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