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Dogs capable of sniffing out cancer have been approved for use in a trial by the NHS (in the UK). The charity Medical Detection Dogs has gained approval from Milton Keynes University Hospital for further trials, after an initial study showed specially trained dogs can detect prostate tumours in urine in 93% of cases.
It is hoped canine testing could help show up inaccuracies in the traditional Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) test, used to determine if men need a biopsy. The test has a high "false positive" rate, and many men are unnecessarily referred for the invasive procedure. Iqbal Anjum, a consultant urologist at the hospital, said the study was "an extremely exciting prospect".
He added: "Over the years there have been many anecdotal reports suggesting that dogs may be able to detect cancer based on the tumour's odour. It is assumed that volatile molecules associated with the tumour would be released into the person's urine, making samples easy to collect and test."
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Monday August 10 2015, @05:53PM
Any chance could find a peer reviewed article on the original trials for this specific disease? I have only found meta-reviews and for prostate cancer, one would expect that a significant fraction of the test subjects would be female.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday August 10 2015, @05:55PM
Do you know what a prostate is or was something left out in your post?
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @07:24PM
Women or men with other types of cancer could be negative controls that would show the dogs' specificity for prostate cancer. Specificity is probably not that important as long as the false positive rate isn't that high.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2015, @10:08AM
But yes perhaps they should have tested those with bladder cancer to see whether the next stage should only a biopsy of the prostate.
e.g. if you have kidney/bladder/etc cancer instead of prostate cancer I think you'd still want to go to the next stage of more thorough testing, rather than have the dog signal an "all clear" (coz the trainer said "bad dog, just sniff for prostate cancer not cancers in general").
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @07:44PM
I think instead of asking for peer review, it would be better to ask for scholarly publications. A scholarly publication includes references to each claim made within, shares the data, explains where it came from, etc. The guardian article is clearly deficient as anything more than an alert to an idea and we should demand better. However, peer review is only as good as the peers and there is actually no evidence it acts as a useful filter. The presence of peer review is correlated with, and possibly encourages, scholarly behavior. The latter is what most people are really seeking though.