Until now, it was reserved for medical professionals to diagnose an infection with Sars-CoV-2. With the "Finnish Covid-19 dogs", support comes from the animal kingdom.
- Dogs have long been used to diagnose diseases such as lung cancer *.
- They can also save lives as companion dogs, for example by alerting their owner, who has diabetes, of hypoglycemia.
- The University of Helsinki has now trained "Covid-19 dogs" for the first time.
For the first time, researchers from the Veterinary Faculty and the Medical Faculty at the University of Helsinki were able to teach dogs how to distinguish Covid-19 patients from healthy study participants. What sounds unsavory opens up new opportunities for medical professionals to prepare for diagnosis . The specially trained dogs could use the urine smell to identify who was affected by the lung disease Covid-19 *.
Covid-19 detection dogs could be used at airports and in old people's homes
"We have a lot of experience in training detection dogs to recognize diseases. It was fantastic to see how quickly the dogs were able to acquire the new smell," scientist Anna Hielm-Björkman is quoted as a study leader in a press release from the University of Helsinki . The first tests would have to be confirmed by a larger study with more patients, but the researchers are optimistic that Covid-19 dogs could in future be used at airports or in old people's homes to identify sick people there.
"We know that other respiratory diseases, like Covid-19, change our body odor, so dogs are very likely to recognize these odors," quotes the Fitbook portal, Professor James Logan, head of the disease control department at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Dogs can be trained to draw attention to certain body odors . In the case of the "Finnish Covid-19 dogs", urine samples were used to identify infected people.
Within six weeks it should be possible to train dogs to special Covid 19 dogs . All that is required are smell samples from sick people.
Read more : Doctors fear this episode of the coronavirus pandemic - and what you can do about it.
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* merkur.de is part of the nationwide Ippen-Digital editors network .
