Sniffing Out Cancer

Periodic colonoscopies are the gold standard for detecting colorectal cancer, but a research team in Japan is working on an unusual alternative. They have trained a Labrador retriever to sniff out colorectal cancer from stool samples. The dog also appears able to smell cancer from the breath of patients. The dog’s accuracy was good, between 95 and 98 percent, but the study is still preliminary. 48 cancer patients and 258 cancer-free volunteers were involved in the study. The stool samples were obtained as the patients prepared for colonoscopy. Eventually, cancer-specific volatile compounds may be used in detecting colorectal cancer. In other similar studies, the dog’s nose has been superior to existing technology for odor detection for cancer screening.
[Gut, online Jan. 31, 2011]