Can Dogs Detect Covid? Study shows that detection dogs are better at detection than RT-PCR tests

Scent dogs may present a cheaper, faster and more effective method of detecting COVID-19 than conventional COVID-19 tests such as RT-PCR.

A new review of recent research published in the Journal of Osteopathic Medicine found that scent dogs are as effective, or even more effective, and could be an important tool in future pandemics.

Professor Tommy Dickey of the University of California, Santa, said, “Although many people have heard about the extraordinary abilities of dogs to help humans, their value in the medical field has been fascinating, but the potential for medical use in the real world has been limited.” Not ready for.” Barbara in America.

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“Having carried out this review, we believe that scent dogs deserve their place as a serious diagnostic method that could be particularly useful during pandemics, possibly in public places with rapid health As part of the investigation. We believe scent dogs will be useful in the detection of a variety of diseases in the future,” he said.

In the study, researchers reviewed 29 studies where dogs were used to detect COVID-19.

The study was conducted by over 400 scientists from over 30 countries using over 31,000 samples from 19 different dog breeds.

In some studies, scent dogs sniffed people directly, sometimes in public places as a form of health check.

In others, the dogs sniffed samples of the patient’s sweat, saliva or urine.

In most studies, scent dogs demonstrated similar or better sensitivity and specificity than current gold-standard RT-PCR tests or antigen tests.

In one study, four dogs could detect the equivalent of less than 2.6 x 10-12 copies of viral RNA per ml.

This is equivalent to detecting a single drop of any odorous substance dissolved in ten and a half Olympic-sized swimming pools and three orders of magnitude better than modern scientific instruments. Dogs can detect symptomatic, pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic patients as well as new COVID variants and even long-lived COVID-19.

A major advantage of using dogs was their speed – they could provide results in seconds to minutes, and unlike traditional diagnostic approaches, they did not require expensive laboratory equipment or create mountains of plastic waste. There was no need.

Dogs have up to 300 million olfactory cells, while humans only have 5 or 6 million, and they use one-third of their brain to process odor information, compared to only 5 percent in humans. .

Dogs trained to detect specific volatile organic compounds that build up in the body during illness have successfully identified some cancer, Parkinson’s and diabetes patients.