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Scientists Train Dog to Detect Thyroid Cancer

| March 11, 2015 Comment

Scientists Train Dog to Detect Thyroid Cancer – Scientists think that using dogs to sniff out cancer can be a whole lot more affordable, and probably, also more accurate.

Scientists recently trained Frankie, a German shepherd mix, to diagnose thyroid cancer with almost 90% accuracy. The dog is given urine samples of patients, and is trained to lie down if he smells cancer, and to turn away if he doesn’t. Frankie correctly identified the cancer in 30 out of 34 cases, where patients had undergone biopsies for abnormal thyroid nodules.

Donald Bodenner, lead investigator, says that he plans to work with veterinarians to train two more dogs to detect thyroid cancer. He is also interested in finding out what exactly the dogs smell, and hopes that they can design products that can do the job. This will help patients by preventing invasive diagnostic procedures which are often unnecessary and provide uncertain results.

Dogs have been trained to smell ovarian and prostate cancer before. Doctors say that in advanced stages of cancer, even humans can smell the disease in patients’ breath. Dogs would be able to detect the cancer much earlier because their sense of smell is 100,000 time sharper than ours.

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