Dogs join the fight against Cancer
Cancer is one of the biggest killers throughout the world, and is said to affect 1 in 3 people. While a cure for Cancer may still be some way off, better ways of detecting it are emerging all the time; the latest of which involves using dogs.
Indeed, a team of SKIN scientists are using sniffer dogs to detect bladder cancer with their noses.
Dr Carolyn Willis is a Dermatology researcher from Amersham Hospital. According to the BBC she’s looking to use sniffer dogs in tests to diagnose bladder cancer by ‘sniffing’ urine samples. This is following news from the US that certain type of skin cancer emits a distinctive sent.
Dr Willis’s team trained the sniffer dogs to notice the difference in the odour of the urine when the patient was infected with bladder cancer. They’re also looking at ways to detect prostrate cancer and skin cancer with the dogs.
According to Dr Willis:
This has great potential as a screening tool. The detection of these volatile organic compounds could make a major contribution to diagnosis.
It’s a non-invasive and simple way of detecting disease.
According to Dr Willis, a sniffer dog’s sensitive nose is the perfect tool for diagnosing these diseases.
[…] already reported on how dogs are being used to fight Cancer, and how a boy with an allergy to dogs was cured by a dog, but now it seems that dogs are also […]