25/07/2022
With about 220 million scent receptors compared to humans who only have 5 million, dogs have an extraordinary sense of smell - so much so that they can sniff out some illnesses in humans. Dogs have smell receptors 10,000 times more accurate than humans. Ever wondered why dogs have wet noses? Well, they have a thin layer of mucus that clings to their nostrils which enhances their scent absorption and therefore improving their ability to smell. The mucus produces clear, watery fluid that helps keep their noses cool. In fact this is an entire topic on its own but in the interest of simplification, dogs wet noses helps enhance their smell receptors.
With this incredible ability dogs are able to detect when we have some illnesses. These are:
1. Cancer
They can be trained to sniff out a variety of types including skin cancer, breast cancer, ovarian, lung and bladder cancer using samples from known cancer patients and people without cancer. In a 2006 study, five dogs were trained to detect cancer based on breath samples. Once trained, the dogs were able to detect breast cancer with 88 percent accuracy, and lung cancer with 99 percent accuracy. They could do this across all four stages of the diseases.
2. Malaria
Dogs proved to be able to detect malaria in children with 70% accuracy from socks worn by them over the night. After several months of training, a Labrador and a Labrador-retriever could tell if a child had the disease even if they were not showing symptoms.
3. Low blood sugar
For years dogs have been trained to help people with diabetes by detecting when their blood sugar is too low or too high. Dogs4Diabetics is one organization that trains and places service dogs with insulin-dependent diabetics. These dogs go through extensive training to be able to detect and alert their handlers to changes in blood sugar levels. They can detect a problem earlier than a glucose monitor.
4. Migraines
It makes a big difference to being able to managing a migraine before it comes on rather than succumbing to hours or even days of intense pain...this is the difference early detection can make. During an earlier research it turns out that 54% of migraine sufferers with dogs noticed changes in the behaviour of their pets during or preceding migraines. Nearly 60 percent of these subjects indicated that their dog had alerted them to the onset of a headache — usually an hour or two in advance.
5. Narcolepsy
Narcolepsy is a condition that affects the sleep-wake cycle. People with narcolepsy cannot control when they fall asleep - they can suddenly fall into a deep sleep in the middle of a task. Imagine someone falling asleep while driving or a pilot falling asleep mid air...you can start to picture how dangerous this condition can be. In a study published in 2013, Luis Dominguez-Ortega, M.D., Ph.D., found that two trained dogs detected 11 of 12 narcolepsy patients using sweat samples, demonstrating that dogs can detect a distinct scent for the disorder.
6. COVID-19
Most recently dogs have been trained to accurately sniff out patients with COVID-19. In a pilot study at the University of Helsinki, dogs were taught to recognise the previously unknown odour of the COVID-19 disease caused by the novel coronavirus. In only a few weeks, the first dogs were able to distinguish urine samples from COVID-19 patients from urine samples of healthy individuals, almost as reliably as a standard PCR test
