Scientists: dogs can detect COVID-19 in humans almost as accurately as tests

Finnish scientists, who found that dogs find COVID-19 by smell, are enthusiastic in the scientific community, while others are skeptical about a study by Finnish scientists. Although everyone knows about the acute instinct of dogs, he writes DW.

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The authors of the new study were specialists from the University of Helsinki: they were the first to train medical dogs, which are used to determine some diagnoses, and to determine the pneumonia COVID-19. After several weeks of training, the dogs distinguished by smell the urine of patients with and without coronavirus, and the percentage of errors was minimal.

“We have been training dogs for a long time, using them to detect a number of diseases,” says Anna Helm-Bröckman, who specializes in research on this topic at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Helsinki. “But this time it was especially encouraging to see how quickly the dogs learned to recognize the typical smell of COVID-19.”

According to Finnish scientists, the accuracy of determining a disease using medical dogs is almost the same as with the conventional coronavirus tests currently in use.

Is COVID-19 dangerous for the dogs themselves?

The experience of researchers in Helsinki is extremely important for other specialists who work with animals, especially in the UK and France, where they are also trying to use dogs for the mass detection of coronavirus infected people.

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Colleagues in Germany are also watching the experiment - with interest, but also with some caution.

“No one can yet say whether the training procedure itself with testing infected patients poses a danger to humans and animals,” says Luca Barrett from the German specialized center for dog training (Deutsches Assistenzhunde-Zentrum). — Until now, German virologists warned us against this. Therefore, before starting training with us, we want to collect more information.”

Meanwhile, Finnish scientists are already moving into the next phase of the study, when the detection of coronavirus will be carried out on a large number of cases. And only after successfully passing this phase will dogs be discussed in their work with patients infected with coronavirus infection.

COVID-19 has a characteristic odor

At the same time, scientists still do not know exactly what substances in the urine of patients “signal” dogs about the presence of a coronavirus infection. Finding out this is quite difficult, especially considering that SARS-CoV-2 affects not only the lungs, but also the walls of blood vessels, kidneys and other internal organs of those infected.

German experts also admit that some diseases have their own specific marker - a special smell that trained dogs recognize quite accurately.

“Dog breast cancer is detected with 93% accuracy,” says Barrett, “and lung cancer is 97% accurate!”

With high accuracy, dogs can also capture odors in skin, stomach, and prostate cancers.

Service dogs in hospitals and airports

Compared to humans, dogs have a much more subtle sense of smell. So, a person has 5 million cells that capture odors, while a dachshund has 125 million, and a shepherd dog has 220 million! Labradors, retrievers, cocker spaniels or shepherd dogs are usually selected for training, then the animals are trained to smell one particular scent. It could be a drug, an explosive, or a marker for one of the diseases. After the animal has recognized this smell during training, a characteristic click is heard, and the dog receives a reward in the form of its favorite treat.

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Medical dogs already work in hospitals and clinics today, but in general they are quite rare. As a rule, their owners simply help medical institutions on a voluntary basis. In scientific circles there are both supporters and strong opponents of using dogs to diagnose patients. In any case, today, even after a dog detects a suspicious odor, additional research is required - and only after this the patient is given a final diagnosis.

However, dogs trained to determine COVID-19, so far plan to use not so much in clinics as in airports. This will allow for a short time to conduct a kind of initial examination of arriving passengers, and already those who are allocated service dogs will be sent to test for coronavirus.

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