SynthesisIntegrative cancer therapies
Remote Medical Scent Detection of Cancer and Infectious Diseases With Dogs and Rats: A Systematic Review.
Synthesis in Integrative cancer therapies. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed.
- A prospective trial for breast cancer diagnosis by canine odorology.Nature communications · 2025Trial
- Trial
- Dogs' Detection of Symptomatic and Asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 by Non-Working Dogs: Feasibility and Limits Under Controlled Laboratory Conditions.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Article
- Preliminary Descriptive Study on the Conservation of Human Sweat Odor: Impact of Storage Temperature and Duration on the Stability of Volatile Organic Compounds in Sorbent Samples.International journal of analytical chemistry · 2026Article
- Beyond Binary: A Machine Learning Framework for Interpreting Organismal Behavior in Cancer Diagnostics.Biomedicines · 2025Review
- BreathERJ open research · 2025Article
- Article
- Non-invasive multiple cancer screening using trained detection canines and artificial intelligence: a prospective double-blind study.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Article
- Dogs can detect an odor profile associated withFrontiers in allergy · 2024Article
- Article
- Unraveling the potential of breath and sweat VOC capture devices for human disease detection: a systematic-like review of canine olfaction and GC-MS analysis.Frontiers in chemistry · 2023Review
- 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
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundRemote medical scent detection of cancer and infectious diseases with dogs and rats has been an increasing field of research these last 20 years. If validated, the possibility of implementing such a technique in the clinic raises many hopes. This systematic review was performed to determine the evidence and performance of such methods and assess their potential relevance in the clinic.
methodsPubmed and Web of Science databases were independently searched based on PRISMA standards between 01/01/2000 and 01/05/2021. We included studies aiming at detecting cancers and infectious diseases affecting humans with dogs or rats. We excluded studies using other animals, studies aiming to detect agricultural diseases, diseases affecting animals, and others such as diabetes and neurodegenerative diseases. Only original articles were included. Data about patients' selection, samples, animal characteristics, animal training, testing configurations, and performances were recorded.
resultsA total of 62 studies were included. Sensitivity and specificity varied a lot among studies: While some publications report low sensitivities of 0.17 and specificities around 0.29, others achieve rates of 1 sensitivity and specificity. Only 6 studies were evaluated in a double-blind screening-like situation. In general, the risk of performance bias was high in most evaluated studies, and the quality of the evidence found was low.
conclusionsMedical detection using animals' sense of smell lacks evidence and performances so far to be applied in the clinic. What odors the animals detect is not well understood. Further research should be conducted, focusing on patient selection, samples (choice of materials, standardization), and testing conditions. Interpolations of such results to free running detection (direct contact with humans) should be taken with extreme caution. Considering this synthesis, we discuss the challenges and highlight the excellent odor detection threshold exhibited by animals which represents a potential opportunity to develop an accessible and non-invasive method for disease detection.
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