Is it possible that they can sniff out even malaria? And when might that be useful?

A small pilot study has shown that dogs can accurately identify socks worn overnight by children infected with malaria parasites.

The study, a collaboration between British and Gambian scientists and the British charity Medical Detection Dogs, was released last week at the annual convention of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

In itself, such canine prowess is not surprising. Since 2004, dogs have shown that they can detect bladder cancer in urine samples, lung cancer in breath samples and ovarian cancer in blood samples.

Trained dogs now warn owners with diabetes when their blood sugar has dropped dangerously low and owners with epilepsy when they are on the verge of a seizure. Other dogs are being taught to detect Parkinson’s disease years before symptoms appear.

The new study, its authors said, does not mean that dogs will replace laboratories. Inexpensive rapid tests for malaria have been available for over a decade; more than 200 million people in dozens of countries are infected each year. But for sorting through crowds, malaria-sniffing dogs could potentially be very useful.

And when a region is close to eliminating malaria, dogs could sweep through villages, nosing out silent carriers — people who are not ill but have parasites in their blood that mosquitoes could pass on to others. If just one chemical indicated cancer or malaria, “we’d have discovered it by now,” said Claire Guest, who founded Medical Detection Dogs in 2008 and oversaw dog training in the study. “It’s more like a tune of many notes, and the dogs can pick it up.”

Most breeds have good noses, she said, but the best for this task are dogs bred to hunt.

The initial trials were just to prove that detection was feasible, said Steve W. Lindsay, an entomologist at Durham University in Britain. But after a test where the dogs had to sniff rows of jars containing bits of thin nylon socks worn overnight by Gambian children, they were only about 70 percent accurate at spotting socks from children with malaria, but 90 percent accurate at not giving false positives.

Their accuracy might have been higher under different circumstances, Dr. Lindsay said. Some children had probably shared beds with infected siblings, and the socks had to be stored in a freezer for a year while the dogs were trained and the study design approved.

Because some Muslims avoid dogs or their saliva as unclean, Dr. Lindsay worried that African Muslims — of which there are millions — would object to being sniffed.

But the Quran permits dogs used for hunting or guarding homes, and after discussing the issue with Gambian imams, he brought dogs wearing red “Medical Detection” jackets into villages.

“Once we explained what we were doing, people were quite O.K. with it,” he said.

He was asked if smaller, cheaper or more local animals could be trained — African giant pouched rats, for example, have been used to detect land mines and tuberculosis.

“Yes, I suppose,” he said. “But at ports of entry, I think people would rather see dogs running around than rats.”


Questions :

1)     What cannot dogs detect thanks to their nose ?

A – Breast cancer

B – Malaria 

C – Bladder cancer

D – Ovarian cancer

2)     For how many years has “Medical Detection Dogs” existed ?

A – 8 years

B – 10 years 

C – 16 years

D – 17 years

3)     Might malaria-sniffing dogs replace laboratories ?

A – Yes, because malaria tests are too expensive

B – No, because tests for malaria exist, they could be used for sorting through crowd

C – Yes, because tests for malaria are already very efficient

D – Yes, because the number od laboratories is too low.

4)     Which animal have already been used to detect land mines and tuberculosis in Africa ?

A – Donkeys

B – Pikachus

C – Goats

D – Rats