Dogs Being Trained to Sniff Out Ovarian Cancer; It's Quite Possible

The topic of a recent article was the use of dogs to "sniff out" early ovarian cancer in patients. Ovarian cancer in its early stages can be difficult to diagnosis and vigorous efforts have been directed toward the development of biomarkers to diagnose its presence (see: Patient Symptoms Inadequate Way to Diagnose Ovarian Cancer; Abbott to Offer Automated HE4 Ovarian Cancer Test to Monitor for Tumor Recurrence). But do we really need to turn to dogs, albeit highly trained ones, to help us diagnose disease? Here is the article about these dog diagnosticians (see: Dogs Trained to Sniff Out Early Signs of Ovarian Cancer) and below is an excerpt from it: It's one of the deadliest forms of cancer for women, but if researcher's hunches are correct, dogs may eventually be able to help doctors detect ovarian cancer earlier, which will help improve the survival rates. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania's Working Dog Center have started training three dogs to use their extraordinary sense of smell to sniff out the signature compound that indicates the presence of ovarian cancer. The scientists theorize that if the dogs can isolate the chemical marker for the disease, they will then be able to direct scientists at the Monell Chemical Senses Center what to look for when developing an electronic sensor to find the same marker in women......Involved in this study are McBaine, a Springer spaniel; Ohlin, a Labrador retriever; and Tsunami, a German...
Source: Lab Soft News - Category: Pathologists Authors: Tags: Clinical Lab Industry News Clinical Lab Testing Laboratory Industry Trends Medical Research Source Type: blogs