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Because dogs have up to 300 million olfactory receptors, compared to six million in humans, canines are in a unique and privileged position in disease detection.
Based on this fact, the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine is training dogs, with the aim of converting them into COVID-19 positive and COVID-19 negative detectors.
The study, which appeals to the exploitation of the sensitivity and specificity of odor, sets the stage for dogs to contribute, recognize and detect COVID-19, from urine and saliva samples from asymptomatic patients, hospital or commercial settings where tests are more difficult to perform, the researchers said.
This process is made possible by the fact that odor detection dogs can accurately detect low concentrations of volatile organic compounds, also known as: "VOCs", associated with various diseases such as: ovarian cancer, bacterial infections, and nasal tumors.
It should be noted that these VOCs are present in human blood, saliva, urine or breath.
The training process, called an odor impression, means that dogs are exposed to COVID-19 positive saliva and urine samples in a laboratory setting.
Once dogs learn to recognize the odor, they are trained to discriminate between COVID-19 positive and COVID-19 negative samples, thereby increasing early detection of the virus in asymptomatic humans.
Although the news has just been published, the medical team confirmed that thanks to this program, the preliminary detection of the disease in humans by eight trained canines could begin as early as July 2020.