Dog outperforms lab test at detecting cancer

 

I want a doggie to follow me around smelling my crap, breath and urine telling me things like,” Drink more water. You need some beta- carotene, eat some carrots. Or YOU HAVE CANCER!” I use to think cows were aliens and for awhile I thought giraffes were ( just look at them). Now I am convinced without a doubt that dogs are aliens , here to save the world!

Source MNN.COM›HEALTH› A black lab named Marine can scent bowel cancer in breath and stool samples as accurately as hi-tech diagnostic tools. By Agence France-PresseTue, Feb 01 2011 at 3:10 AM ESTComments SNIFFING OUT DISEASE: The findings support hopes for an “electronic nose” one day that can sniff a tumor at its earliest stages. (Photo: Pw95/Flickr) Japanese researchers reported a “lab” breakthrough: A black lab named Marine can scent bowel cancer in breath and stool samples as accurately as hi-tech diagnostic tools. The findings support hopes for an “electronic nose” one day that can sniff a tumor at its earliest stages, they said. Researchers led by Hideto Sonoda at Kyushu University inFukuoka, Japan, used the specially-trained female black labrador to carry out 74 “sniff tests” over a period of several months. Each of the tests comprised five breath or stool samples, only one of which was cancerous. The samples came from 48 people with confirmed bowel cancer at various stages of the disease and 258 volunteers with no bowel cancer or who had had cancer in the past. They complicated the task for the eight-year-old canine detective by adding a few challenges to the samples. Around half of the non-cancer samples came from people with bowel polyps, which are benign but are also a possible precursor of bowel cancer. Six percent of the breath samples, and 10 percent of the stool samples, came from people with other gut problems, such as inflammatory bowel disease, ulcers, diverticulitis, and appendicitis. The retriever performed as well as a colonoscopy, a technique in which a fibre-optic tube with a camera on the end is inserted into the rectum to look for suspect areas of the intestine. READ MORE