Until now, we used the scent of dogs to detect drugs or explosives … Certainly.
But for more than twenty years, we have also known that the dog is able to detect, thanks to his nose, certain cancerous lesions (skin, lung or bladder) or to detect prostate cancer in the patient’s urine. .
Knowing that the smell of the dog often exceeds – in terms of effectiveness – scientific tests! In this context, the National Veterinary School of Alfort launched a few weeks ago, an unprecedented study by its scale on an international scale which was carried out to compare two screening methods for Covid-19: the famous RT test. -PCR on nasopharyngeal swab (reference test that everyone knows) and canine olfactory test.
Thus, between March 16 and April 9, 2021, 335 people who came to be tested in Paris were included in this trial; of participants aged 35 on average, 295 (88%) were over 18 and 170 (51%) were female.
For the canine olfactory test, samples of axillary sweat (under the arms) were collected via compresses placed two minutes under the armpits of the persons tested. They were then locked in jars and then sniffed by at least two different dogs *. The latter have not been in contact with the volunteers.
Concretely, the jars containing the compresses were placed in “olfaction cones” arranged in lines so that each dog could sniff them. The latter requires a fraction of a second per sample and therefore has, in addition to the non-invasive aspect of the examination, the advantage of providing an instant result and a very limited implementation cost. This detection was made blind from the result of the nasopharyngeal RT-PCR.
Out of 335 people tested, 109 are positive in nasopharayngeal RT-PCR (reference test). The sensitivity of the canine olfactory test is 97% (95% confidence interval: 92-99) and the specificity is 91% (IdC95%: 87-95). These results scientifically confirm the ability of dogs to detect an olfactory signature of Covid-19.
This study is the first of its type carried out at the international level and should pave the way for a wider use of the olfactory detection dog in the fight against the virus, in line with recent work carried out under the aegis of the World Organization for health. An implementation of this diagnostic approach could be considered with a view to targeting people who should benefit from virological screening and to facilitate mass screening due to the rapid response of dogs.
* Nine trained dogs, firefighters from Yvelines and Oise, EnvA, or from the United Arab Emirates, participated in the study.
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