ArticleBMJ global health2022
Canine real-time detection of SARS-CoV-2 infections in the context of a mass screening event.
Article in BMJ global health, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 12 citations in OpenAlex.
- Canine "Sniffin' Sticks" enable behavioural olfactometry to complement neurological examination in dogs.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Trained Scent Dog Detection and GC-MS Analysis of Volatile Organic Compounds from Murine Coronavirus-Infected Cell Cultures.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Article
- The Role of Olfaction in Dogs: Evolution, Biology, and Human-Oriented Work.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Review
- Public perception of medical detection dogs and other COVID-19 testing strategies.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- The science behind the nose: correlating volatile organic compound characterisation with canine biodetection of COVID-19.ERJ open research · 2024Article
- β-Propiolactone (BPL)-inactivation of SARS-Co-V-2: In vitro validation with focus on saliva from COVID-19 patients for scent dog training.Journal of virological methods · 2023Review
- Potential for Early Noninvasive COVID-19 Detection Using Electronic-Nose Technologies and Disease-Specific VOC Metabolic Biomarkers.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- ChatGPT and scientific papers in veterinary neurology; is the genie out of the bottle?Frontiers in veterinary science · 2023Article
- Expert considerations and consensus for using dogs to detect human SARS-CoV-2-infections.Frontiers in medicine · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
28 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
introductionPrevious research demonstrated that medical scent detection dogs have the ability to distinguish SARS-CoV-2 positive from negative samples with high diagnostic accuracy. To deploy these dogs as a reliable screening method, it is mandatory to examine if canines maintain their high diagnostic accuracy in real-life screening settings. We conducted a study to evaluate the performance of medical scent detection dogs under real-life circumstances.
methodsEight dogs were trained to detect SARS-CoV-2 RT-qPCR-positive samples. Four concerts with a total of 2802 participants were held to evaluate canines' performance in screening individuals for SARS-CoV-2 infection. Sweat samples were taken from all participants and presented in a line-up setting. In addition, every participant had been tested with a SARS-CoV-2 specific rapid antigen test and a RT-qPCR and they provided information regarding age, sex, vaccination status and medical disease history. The participants' infection status was unknown at the time of canine testing. Safety measures such as mask wearing and distance keeping were ensured.
resultsThe SARS-CoV-2 detection dogs achieved a diagnostic specificity of 99.93% (95% CI 99.74% to 99.99%) and a sensitivity of 81.58% (95% CI 66.58% to 90.78%), respectively. The overall rate of concordant results was 99.68%. The majority of the study population was vaccinated with varying vaccines and vaccination schemes, while several participants had chronic diseases and were under chronic medication. This did not influence dogs' decisions.
conclusionOur results demonstrate that SARS-CoV-2 scent detection dogs achieved high diagnostic accuracy in a real-life scenario. The vaccination status, previous SARS-CoV-2 infection, chronic disease and medication of the participants did not influence the performance of the dogs in detecting the acute infection. This indicates that dogs provide a fast and reliable screening option for public events in which high-throughput screening is required.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.