Dogs Could Identify Early Stages of Ovarian Cancer

June 26th, 2008 • Related • Filed Under
feature photo

Research led by György Horvath MD,PhD of the Göteborg University Hospital proved that trained dogs detect cancer through scent.

The research was focused mainly on ovarian cancer in all stages, including borderline tumors and the results were that most common ovarian carcinomas are characterized by a single specific odor.

The research makes sense if we consider that the high mortality rate associated with ovarian cancer is due to late diagnosis. Trained dogs could be used to detect ovarian cancer in its early stages.

There is already evidence that dogs can detect other types of cancer, such as melanoma, bladder, lung and breast cancer, but these previous researches were unable to identify whether the dogs responded to scents related to cancer or to the cancer itself.

In the research concerning ovarian cancer the dogs were trained to distinguish between different histopathological types of ovarian carcinomas. Blind tests showed 100% sensitivity and 97.5% specificity.

Source: Human Ovarian Carcinomas Detected by Specific Odor. Integrative Cancer Therapies, 2008; 7 (2): 76 DOI: 10.1177/1534735408319058 does not specify what dogs were used in this research.


Secondbrain

There Are 5 Responses So Far. »

  1. Comment by luci on 26 June 2008:

    This is excellent news and deserves more exposure.

    Lu

  2. Comment by Mihaela Lica on 26 June 2008:

    Thanks, Luci, I feel the same. :)

  3. Comment by UltraViolet on 30 June 2008:

    Very interesting.

    Perhaps this is why dogs like to sniff people’s crotches?

    Be interesting if they can put this into mainstream diagnoses

  4. Comment by Kay Louise on 25 September 2008:

    This is strange as i have recently been diagnosed with ovarian cancer and to be honest my two German Wirehaired Pointers always used to jump up at me and land on my stomach which would give me the most horrific pain,since being diagnosed and had surgery they havent done it since!! How weird is that?

  5. Comment by Mihaela Lica on 1 October 2008:

    Thanks for sharing this, Kay. I suppose they stopped doing it because the problem is gone? I think they were trying to tell you that something was wrong before… Animals have amazing instincts, we probably understand only 10% of what they try to communicate.

Post a Response