Sniffer dog can detect cancer with up to 90pc accuracy

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania in the US say a labrador dog is more than 90 per cent successful in identifying the scent of ovarian cancer in tissue samples.

This opens a new window on a disease with no effective test for early detection and that kills tens of thousands of women a year around the world. When found early, there is a five-year survival rate of more than 90 per cent.

With 220 million scent cells in a canine snout, compared with 50 million for humans, dogs have long helped on search-and-rescue missions. Now, evidence is growing to support the possible use of canines by clinicians. The largest study done on cancer-sniffing dogs found they could detect prostate cancer by smelling urine samples with 98 per cent accuracy.

At least one application has been lodged seeking United States approval of a kit using breath samples to find breast cancer.

"Our study demonstrates the use of dogs might represent in the future a real clinical opportunity if used together with common diagnostic tools," Gian Luigi Taverna, the author of the prostate cancer research was reported yesterday as telling the American Urological Association in Boston.

While smaller studies have shown dogs could detect a range of illnesses, the question of whether they could be used on a large-scale basis to find disease has been received with scepticism.