New study shows dogs may have innate ability to sniff out lung cancer

April 11--They are man's best friend for a reason.

A new preliminary study supposedly proves dogs' ability to detect lung cancer just by smelling blood samples.

The study specifically used four 2-year-old beagles who were trained to distinguish between blood serum from malignant lung cancer patients when presented alongside healthy control samples with just their nose.

That's possible because dogs have 300 million olfactory receptors compares to 6 million in humans, giving them the ability to smell between 10,000 and 100,000 times better than people.

The study claims three dogs were able to correctly identify the cancer samples around 97% of the time. A fourth dog was "unmotivated to perform during training" and only sniffed out the cancer 80% of the time.

Although not yet published in a peer-reviewed journal, the researchers said the study "paves the way for a larger scale research project designed to explore the use of canine scent detection as a tool for detecting cancer biomarkers, ultimately leading to their identification."

It could potentially lead to non-invasive cancer screening method.

Heather Junqueira works for the Florida-based pharmaceutical lab BioScentDx which conducted the study.

"A highly sensitive test for detecting cancer could potentially save thousands of lives and change the way the disease is treated," Junqueira told USA Today.

Junqueira presented the study's findings at the annual American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in Orlando earlier this week, the publication reported.

She said that although there's no cure for cancer, early detection gives people the best chance for survival, which is why her team pursues this type of research.

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