14 DAY TRIAL // Cats might be the kings and queens of the online world, but it's still dogs that are man's best friends. Case in point: the tale of a pooch successfully trained to diagnose thyroid cancer simply by sniffing patients' pee.
Speaking at a recent meeting of the Endocrine Society held in the city of San Diego in California, US, the researchers who got to work with this dog said that, in a series of experiments, the pooch identified instances of thyroid cancer with an 88.2% degree of accuracy.
True, a 100% degree of accuracy would have been a heck lot more impressive. Then again, the fact of the matter is that the fine-needle aspiration biopsies most doctors currently rely on to diagnose this type of cancer are not completely foolproof either.
Meet the dog that can diagnose thyroid cancer
The pooch that researchers successfully trained to pin down thyroid cancer by taking a whiff of guys' and gals' urine goes by the name of Frankie. The canine, a rescue German Shepherd-mix, is the first dog ever to learn how to identify thyroid cancer by smelling a patient's pee.
“Frankie is the first dog trained to differentiate benign thyroid disease from thyroid cancer by smelling a person’s urine,” explains specialist Arny Ferrando, who helped train this dog to look for signs of thyroid cancer in pee.
To test the pooch's accuracy at identifying thyroid cancer chemical signals in urine, researcher Donald Bodenner at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and study coauthor Arny Ferrando had the canine sniff urine samples obtained from 34 patients.
These patients were then sent to have nodules developing in their body removed and biopsied. When the scientists compared the outcome of these procedures to the pooch's diagnosis, they found that Frankie had accurately figured out what was wrong with 30 of the 34 patients included in this study.
Why turn to dogs to diagnose cancer?
As explained by researcher Donald Bodenner and his colleagues, neither of the methods currently used to diagnose thyroid cancer is 100% reliable. Besides, most of them are invasive procedures and not exactly patient-friendly. Not to mention the fact that they are quite expensive.
The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences researchers hope that, at some point in the future, dogs will prove a worthy ally in the fight against thyroid cancer and help doctors diagnose this condition without having to poke folks with needles or cut them open.
