Sniffer dogs can detect coronavirus from 15 other pathogens, Germany study says
- Dogs, with their extraordinary sense of smell, have been put to use in some public spaces such as airports during the pandemic to help reduce infections
- Sniffer dogs do not smell the virus itself, but volatile organic compounds that are produced during metabolic processes after a virus infection, researchers say
Sniffer dogs are able to distinguish the Sars-CoV-2 coronavirus from 15 other viral respiratory pathogens with high accuracy, according to a new study.
Research from an international team of researchers led by the German University of Veterinary Medicine Hanover (TiHo) shows for the first time that the substances the animals smell in people infected with the coronavirus are specific for Sars-CoV-2.
Dogs, with their extraordinary sense of smell, have been put to use in some public spaces such as airports during the pandemic to help reduce infections.
According to the study, published in the Frontiers in Medicine journal in November, the sniffer dogs do not smell the viruses themselves, but volatile organic compounds that are produced during metabolic processes after a virus infection.
“It is known that infectious respiratory diseases can release specific volatile organic compounds, and this study shows that dogs can recognise these unique patterns of volatile organic compounds from Sars-CoV-2,” Holger Volk, Professor and Head of the Clinic for Small Animals at TiHo, informed.
For the study, the researchers used 12 sniffer dogs that were trained with inactivated saliva samples from Corona patients.