Are Dogs a Doctor’s Best Friend?

There is no doubt about it: dogs are amazing animals. They provide us with endless unconditional love; they can help reduce health issues, such as high blood pressure and depression; and they are loyal in their service to us. Dogs are often employed to sniff out drugs, and the military uses them to detect roadside bombs in war zones. You can add another item to this already impressive resume: cancer detector.

Recently, Japanese researchers reported that a trained Lab was able to detect colon cancer with up to 98 percent accuracy. Instead of expensive panels of blood work and tests, the Lab, named Marine, was able to do this by sniffing the patients’ breath and stool samples. Not too shabby – especially considering that her success rate was higher than that of the fecal occult test, which is a standard diagnostic tool. This test is unable to detect 30 percent of patients’ cancers.

Marine’s finely tuned nose was able to identify both early and late stage cancers. Since beginning her training in 2005, she has learned to detect 12 distinct cancers using only breath samples.

Incredibly, Marine’s success was not a fluke or stunning coincidence. Other studies have confirmed that dogs can use their terrific sense of smell to sniff out cancer. British researchers found that dogs could detect bladder cancer by simply smelling the patients’ urine, and Swedish researchers trained dogs to detect ovarian cancer. Trained dogs have also been shown to detect lung and breast cancer from tissue, blood, and urine.

Researchers are working on the theory that different cancers have different smells, and dogs are vital to that work. Another benefit: having a dog sniff your breath is a whole lot more pleasant than a colonoscopy, and studies show, it’s as accurate.