Newswise — Scent dogs may represent a cheaper, faster and more effective way to detect COVID-19, and could be a key tool in future pandemics, a new review of recent research suggests. The review, published in De Gruyter’s Journal of Osteopathic Medicine, found that scent dogs are as effective, or even more effective, than conventional COVID-19 tests such as RT-PCR.
Dogs possess up to 300 million olfactory cells, compared to just 5 or 6 million in humans, and use one-third of their brains to process scent information, compared with just 5% for humans. Dogs trained to recognize specific volatile organic compounds created in the body during disease have successfully identified patients with certain cancers, Parkinson’s and diabetes.
Prof. Tommy Dickey of the University of California, Santa Barbara and Heather Junqueira of BioScent Detection Dogs reviewed 29 studies where dogs were used to detect COVID-19. The studies were performed using over 31,000 samples by over 400 scientists from more than 30 countries using 19 different dog breeds. In some studies, the scent dogs sniffed people directly, sometimes in public places as a health screening. In others, the dogs sniffed patient samples such as sweat, saliva or urine samples.
In the majority of studies, scent dogs have shown equal or superior sensitivity and specificity compared to the current gold-standard RT-PCR tests or antigen tests. In a particular study, four of these dogs exhibited the incredible ability to detect viral RNA in quantities as small as less than 2.6 x 10−12 copies per milliliter. To put this in perspective, it is like detecting one drop of a specific odor dissolved in ten and a half Olympic-sized swimming pools, which is three orders of magnitude more accurate than modern scientific instruments.
The dogs have demonstrated their capability to detect COVID-19 in symptomatic, pre-symptomatic, and asymptomatic patients, including new COVID variants and cases of long COVID. One of the significant advantages of using scent dogs is their rapidity; they can provide results within seconds to minutes, eliminating the need for expensive lab equipment and reducing the generation of plastic waste, which is common in conventional diagnostic approaches.
Prof. Dickey stated, "While people have recognized the extraordinary abilities of dogs to assist humans, their potential in the medical field has been regarded as intriguing but not yet ready for real-world medical use." However, after conducting this comprehensive review, they believe that scent dogs have earned their place as a credible diagnostic methodology, particularly valuable during pandemics, potentially facilitating swift health screenings in public spaces. They have great confidence that scent dogs will prove effective in detecting a wide range of diseases in the future.
Prof. Dickey and Heather Junqueira expressed their conviction that the remarkable international COVID scent dog research detailed in their paper demonstrates, perhaps for the first time, that medical scent dogs are prepared for widespread medical applications.
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