The Starset Societyby Rhodilee Jean Dolor
Dogs are known for their powerful sense of smell. Their nose is sensitive enough that law enforcement authorities rely on these animals to track down fleeing convicts as well as detect and locate hidden illicit drugs.
A new study now finds that man’s best friend can also smell Parkinson’s disease, opening doors to earlier and non-invasive diagnosis for these neurological conditions.
According to the research, which was published in The Journal of Parkinson’s Disease on July 15, people with Parkinson’s emit a distinct odor that trained dogs can reliably detect from skin swabs.
Training Dogs To Sniff Out Parkinson’s Disease
Medical Detection Dogs, a UK-based organization engaged in canine olfactory diagnostics research, trained dogs to distinguish between the oily skin secretions, known as subum, from people with Parkinson’s disease and those who do not have the disorder.
Over a period of several weeks, the dogs were trained on more than 200 skin swabs obtained from individuals who tested positive for Parkinson’s disease and from healthy individuals. The training involved giving the dogs rewards when they correctly flagged the positive samples and correctly ignored the negative samples.
The researchers eventually tested the trained dogs in a double blinded trial and found that the animals were highly accurate in sniffing out Parkinson’s disease.
In their paper, Nicola Rooney, from Bristol Veterinary School at the University of Bristol in the UK, and colleagues wrote that the results support earlier research showing that dogs can be trained to reliably detect the smell of Parkinson’s disease.
“Here we have trained two dogs to tell the difference between the oily skin secretions, known as sebum, from people with Parkinson’s and those without,” the researchers wrote. “After their training, the dogs were tested using 60 new control and 40 target skin swabs. The dogs correctly identified 70% and 80% of the Parkinson’s samples and correctly ignored 90% and 98% of the control samples.”
