ArticleJournal of diabetes science and technology2017
Reliability of Trained Dogs to Alert to Hypoglycemia in Patients With Type 1 Diabetes.
Article in Journal of diabetes science and technology, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Hypoglycaemia detection and prediction techniques: A systematic review on the latest developments.Diabetes/metabolism research and reviews · 2021Pooled it
- Detection of Impending Aggressive Outbursts in Patients with Psychiatric Disorders: Violence Clues from Dogs.Scientific reports · 2019Trial
- The Role of Olfaction in Dogs: Evolution, Biology, and Human-Oriented Work.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Review
- What Is the Role of Diabetic Alert Dogs in Glycemic Monitoring for Individuals with Type 1 Diabetes? A Scoping Review.Medical sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- And the Dog Was Barking: Transforming Quality of Life in Diabetes Through Innovative Hypoglycemia Detection.Journal of diabetes · 2025Article
- Steps toward clinical validation of exhaled volatile organic compound biomarkers for hypoglycemia in persons with type 1 diabetes.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Web-Based Skin Cancer Assessment and Classification Using Machine Learning and Mobile Computerized Adaptive Testing in a Rasch Model: Development Study.JMIR medical informatics · 2022Article
- Use of trained scent dogs for detection of COVID-19 and evidence of cost-saving.Frontiers in medicine · 2022Article
- The Potential Use of Volatile Biomarkers for Malaria Diagnosis.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Review
- Canine Olfaction: Physiology, Behavior, and Possibilities for Practical Applications.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2021Review
- Canine olfactory detection and its relevance to medical detection.BMC infectious diseases · 2021Review
- Sniffer dogs as a screening/diagnostic tool for COVID-19: a proof of concept study.BMC infectious diseases · 2021Article
- Dog Owners' Survey reveals Medical Alert Dogs can alert to multiple conditions and multiple people.PloS one · 2021Article
- Dogs demonstrate the existence of an epileptic seizure odour in humans.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- An Owner-Independent Investigation of Diabetes Alert Dog Performance.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2019Article
- Article
- Diabetes Alert Dogs (DADs): An assessment of accuracy and implications.Diabetes research and clinical practice · 2017Article
- A Web-Based Study of Dog Ownership and Depression Among People Living With HIV.JMIR mental health · 2017Article
- Variability of Diabetes Alert Dog Accuracy in a Real-World Setting.Journal of diabetes science and technology · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundWe examined the reliability of trained dogs to alert to hypoglycemia in individuals with type 1 diabetes.
methodsPatients with type 1 diabetes who currently used diabetes alert dogs participated in this exploratory study. Subjects reported satisfaction, perceived dog glucose sensing ability and reasons for obtaining a trained dog. Reliability of dog alerts was assessed using capillary blood glucose (CBG) and blinded continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) as comparators in 8 subjects (age 4-48). Hypoglycemia was defined as CBG or CGM <70 mg/dL.
resultsDog users were very satisfied (8.9/10 on a Likert-type scale) and largely confident (7.9/10) in their dog's ability to detect hypoglycemia. Detection of hypoglycemia was the primary reason for obtaining a trained dog. During hypoglycemia, spontaneous dog alerts occurred at a rate 3.2 (2.0-5.2, 95% CI) times higher than during euglycemia (70-179 mg/dL). Dogs provided timely alerts in 36% (sensitivity) of all hypoglycemia events (n = 45). Due to inappropriate alerts, the PPV of a dog alert for hypoglycemia was 12%. When there was concurrence of a hypoglycemic event between the dog alert and CGM (n = 30), CGM would have alerted prior to the dog in 73% of events (median 22-minute difference).
conclusionsThis is the first study evaluating reliability of trained dogs to alert to hypoglycemia under real-life conditions. Trained dogs often alert a human companion to otherwise unknown hypoglycemia; however due to high false-positive rate, a dog alert alone is unlikely to be helpful in differentiating hypo-/hyper-/euglycemia. CGM often detects hypoglycemia before a trained dog by a clinically significant margin.
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Registered trials
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