According to a new study announced by the pharmaceutical firm BioScentDx dogs are able to sniff out lung cancer. What? How?

In a public release posted on EurikaAlert! about the study, they say that "dogs have smell receptors 10,000 times more accurate than humans', making them highly sensitive to odors we can't perceive."

Heather Junqueira is the lead researcher at BioScentDx and is the one who conducted the study. In the public release, it says that Heather and her colleagues "used a form of clicker training to teach four beagles to distinguish between normal blood serum and samples from patients with malignant lung cancer."

Three of the beagles identified lung cancer samples correctly 96.7% of the time. Wait, three of the four? What happened to the fourth? According to the public release, the dog named Snuggles was "unmotivated to perform." He must have been having a "ruff" day or something. Get it?

The fact that this study did so well is great. It means there could be an option in the future for less expensive and less invasive ways to detect cancer early on.

 

Source: KARE 11

 

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