Dogs Sniff Out Bladder Cancer From Urine

hookedup writes "Volunteers from Hearing Dogs for Deaf People found dogs can be trained to sniff out a tell-tale scent of bladder cancer from urine. As a group, the 6 dogs used in the test correctly flagged the positive sample 22 times out of 54, for a success rate of 41 per cent. By chance alone, the expected success rate would be 14 per cent"

Comments

Can this be used for other cancers?

[mind21_98]

The article mentions one case where they were able to find kidney cancer. Could this be used for other cancers as well, or is it restricted to cancers of the urinary tract? Although the detection rate seems low, it is fairly promising.

False Positives

[Shinglor]

s a group, the 6 dogs used in the test correctly flagged the positive sample 22 times out of 54, for a success rate of 41 per cent. By chance alone, the expected success rate would be 14 per cent

So how many false positives were there?

Perhaps this shows diet/cancer relation

[tod_miller]

I am always conscious of 2nd level correlations. Perhaps the dogs found a 'correlation' between urine scent and cancer because of the diet of the person. Indeed the dogs may have been inaccurate and only chosen those with a diet with a high disposition for bladder cancer.

Of course, this means those who were marked positively should be careful. Perhaps try and find any other common traits ammongst those who were selected, perhaps the sex / age of the people correlates to bladder cancer and this also was detected somehow by the dogs.

Of coruse, I am sure they thought of all this, I can just imagie health insurance door to door guys fleecing you over with a poodle before giving you a quote.

I am sure some /. would love that! :-)