Dogs detect breast cancer from bandage: researchers

Dogs can sniff out cancer from a piece of cloth which had touched the breast of a woman with a tumour, researchers said Friday, announcing the results of an unusual, but promising, diagnostic trial.

With just six months of training, a pair of German Shepherds became 100-percent accurate in their new role as breast cancer spotters, the team said. The technique is simple, non-invasive and cheap, and may revolutionise cancer detection in countries where mammograms are hard to come by.
“In these countries, there are oncologists, there are surgeons, but in rural areas often there is limited access to diagnostics,” Isabelle Fromantin, who leads project Kdog, told journalists in Paris.This means that “people arrive too late,” to receive life-saving treatment, she added. “If this works, we can roll it out rapidly.
”Working on the assumption that breast cancer cells have a distinguishing smell which sensitive dog noses will pick up, the team collected samples from 31 cancer patients.These were pieces of bandage that patients had held against their affected breast. With the help of canine specialist Jacky Experton, the team trained German Shepherds Thor and Nykios to recognise cancerous rags from non-cancerous ones.“It is all based on game-playing” and reward, he explained.