medical dogs

[Guest guest]

If anyone here belongs to ANI-L, would you forward this article there

(header: AC) for the dog-lovers in that group? My sub to ANI-L has

fallen between addresses at the moment. thanks.

Jane

from the New York Times:

September 28, 2004

Moist Nose Shows Promise in Tracking Down Cancers

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

ritish researchers have trained dogs to detect bladder cancer by

sniffing human urine, opening up the possibility that dogs - or

electronic noses modeled on their snouts - may one day be used to

detect the disease.

The study, published in the British medical journal BMJ on Saturday,

is the first to demonstrate scientifically that dogs can detect

cancer through smell, its authors said.

Meanwhile, other research teams, at institutions from Cambridge

University to Florida State, are testing dogs' ability to detect

lung, breast and liver cancer in breath; prostate cancer in urine;

and melanoma on skin.

The study, done at Amersham Hospital in Buckinghamshire, England, was

small; six dogs sniffed at 54 urine samples after weeks of training.

As a group, they were only about 41 percent accurate. That is far

below what is considered acceptable on most medical tests, but the

idea is in its infancy.

Dogs will not, of course, replace X-rays, C.T. scans, fiber-optic

scopes, mammograms, Pap smears and other cancer screens. But some

expensive and invasive tests are done only after symptoms are found -

like blood in the urine of chemical workers, who are at high risk of

bladder cancer.

Also, without a biopsy, most tests cannot tell a tumor from a benign

lump, as dogs apparently can.

Dog tests might eventually be cheap and work early, and they also

might be useful in poor countries, scientists said.

The dogs - three cocker spaniels, a Labrador, a papillon and a

mongrel - were lent to the researchers by a school training them to

help the deaf. Most breeds have equally keen senses of smell,

scientists say, and it is only temperament that, for example, makes

bloodhounds better trackers.

Dr. Wallace Sampson, the editor of The Scientific Review of

Alternative Medicine, which questions non-Western medicine and

quackery, said he had previously laughed off the idea of

cancer-sniffing dogs and that he was " still skeptical, but less than

I was at first. "

Dr. Sampson, who is also a retired professor of oncology at Stanford,

said it was " chemically and biologically possible " that tumors gave

off enough chemicals for dogs to smell, but he wanted further tests

that would, for example, control for smokers, who are at high risk

for bladder cancer and also have volatile tobacco chemicals in their

urine.

Dr. Jim , director of the Sensory Research Institute at Florida

State University, said he was disappointed at the 41 percent success

rate, which he said suggested that the dogs had not been trained

enough.

" I hypothesize that dogs are phenomenally better than that, " he said,

adding that they will be useful only if it is shown that they can

catch tumors earlier than doctors can.

In an intriguing side note to the British study, all six of the dogs

detected cancer in the urine of a man who was thought to be

cancer-free and was used as a control. When he was tested further, he

was found to have a kidney tumor, and his life was saved.

" As you can guess, we were cock-a-hoop about that, " said Dr. C.

T. Church, a retired surgeon who was the study's lead author.

Two of the spaniels were right five out of nine times. The mongrel

and the Labrador, sniffing only dried samples, were right one and

three times, respectively.

Dr. Church, a dog fancier, said he was inspired by a 1989 anecdotal

report in The Lancet, another British medical journal, about a border

collie-Doberman mix that kept nosing a mole on its owner's leg and

even tried to nip it off. When removed, the mole turned out to be

malignant.

Gas chromatography studies have shown that some tumors exude minute

amounts of formaldehyde, alkanes and benzene derivatives not found in

healthy tissue.

Dr. 's institute has done experiments showing that dogs can

detect chemicals at one ten-thousandth to one hundred-thousandth the

concentrations that humans can, while ignoring other odors.

Historically, doctors have used smell to make some diagnoses.

Hippocrates described the fruity odor of diabetes in the breath and

the musty odor of liver disease. In China, The Yellow Emperor's

Classic of Internal Medicine counseled diagnosing lung infections by

having patients spit into a fire; bacteria-laden sputum smells putrid.

Although the British study claims to be the most rigorously validated

and is the first to be published in a major medical journal, other

individual dogs have been trained to recognize cancers.

The leader of the pack was , a schnauzer in Tallahassee, Fla.

Originally a police bomb sniffer, he was retrained in 1993 to find

test tubes with cancer cells, then encouraged to sniff humans lying

on a low table and to place his paw on tumors.

In a paper accepted by Applied Animal Behavior Science, Dr.

describes how correctly found melanomas on six of seven

patients. (In training, , who died in 2000, succeeded 100

percent of the time in finding a surgically removed tumor taped under

one of many bandages on healthy volunteers.)

Shing Ling, an apricot-colored poodle at the Pine Street Chinese

Benevolent Association clinic in San Anselmo, Calif., was trained in

2000 to detect lung and breast tumors in the breath of cancer

patients. She had a success rate " up in the 80's " in percentage, said

McCulloch, the research director. (The association's clinic

does not reject chemotherapy, surgery or radiation for cancer, but

adds other approaches like acupuncture and Chinese herbs.)

Shing Ling died of liver failure two years ago, but this summer, Mr.

McCulloch oversaw a new study with five other dogs. In it, 88

untreated cancer patients breathed into cylinders of plastic wool, as

did 88 healthy volunteers. The handlers who presented the cylinders

to the dogs did not know which were which.

Mr. McCulloch declined to give the results before the study was

published, but he said they were " way better than chance. "

Veterinary science researchers at Cambridge University in England are

seeking financing for a set of urine tests like the Amersham one, but

for prostate cancer.

Various electronic noses are in different phases of testing on lung

cancer patients. Some contain spectrometers, but one contains

minuscule polymers that swell when exposed to vapors, much as the

noses of dogs and humans do. Named for the owner of a famous schnoz,

it is called Cyranose.

<http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html>Copyright

2004 <http://www.nytco.com/>The New York Times Company

[Guest guest]

done

At 06:22 PM 9/28/2004 -0700, you wrote:

>If anyone here belongs to ANI-L, would you forward this article there

>(header: AC) for the dog-lovers in that group? My sub to ANI-L has

>fallen between addresses at the moment. thanks.

>

>Jane

________________________________

Ooops....Wrong Planet! Syndrome

Autism Spectrum Resources

www.PlanetAutism.com

jypsy@...

[Guest guest]

jypsy wrote:

> done

Ummm, jypsy, do you mean you forwarded it too?

(I won't know until tonight, when I get the ANI

Digest, I guess.) And if you answer this, I won't

know until I get home from work, speaking of which,

I gotta Go!

Clay

> At 06:22 PM 9/28/2004 -0700, you wrote:

> > If anyone here belongs to ANI-L, would you forward

> > this article there (header: AC) for the dog-lovers

> > in that group? My sub to ANI-L has fallen between

> > addresses at the moment. thanks.

> >Jane