Man’s best friend the Dog could as well have added roles apart from just being a security provider. Research now how that the Dog could as well be a powerful tool in diagnosing malaria.
According to the research, some dogs were trained to identify whether someone was infected with malaria simply by sniffing their socks.
Previously, the dogs were trained to use smell to diagnose some forms of cancer and diabetes.
“People carrying malaria parasite already have a signature scent, and we know if dogs can smell drugs, food and other substances, they should be able to detect this smell on clothing, too,” said Steve Lindsay, a public health entomologist in the Department of Biosciences at Durham University and lead investigator on the study.
The idea has already been tested in Gambia where about 600 socks were collected from school going children. It is the socks that were used back in the UK for over four months to conduct the tests.
“We took the socks that had captured the scent of the children overnight and flew them to the UK, where the dogs were trained to smell and differentiate samples that were infected or not,” Lindsay said.
Of the samples, 175 were used to train the dogs: 30 from children infected with malaria and 145 from uninfected children.
By smelling the socks alone, the dogs Lexi, a Labrador-golden retriever, and Sally, a Lab were able to accurately detect 70% of infected children and 90% of uninfected children.
Dogs have millions of sensors in their noses that make them more sensitive to odors than humans hence they can be deployed as tools for malaria detection, as they have in the diagnosis of some forms of cancer, according to the researchers.
But more research is needed after this pilot study, and the authors warn that the method is still in the early trial stages. They would need to test the technique on samples from other countries before the animals can be used in the field, they said.
Further studies also need to be done, especially in African countries, to see whether dogs can “directly” sniff out malaria in infected people, the team said.
Detection rates could have been higher up to 78% if the children with malaria had the same type of malaria parasites, they added.
There were an estimated 216 million cases of malaria globally in 2016, including 445,000 deaths, according to the World Health Organization. The disease can be treated, but there is no preventive vaccine.
In Kenya, More than four million cases of malaria are reported annually. A 5.1% mortality rate has been reported among patients admitted with severe malaria.