Dogs Can Sniff Out Prostate Cancer With More Than 90% Accuracy - AskMen © montillona/Flickr

Dogs Can Sniff Out Prostate Cancer With More Than 90% Accuracy

Trending News: Dogs May Be Our Secret Weapon In Detecting Prostate Cancer Joel Balsam
April 11, 2015

Why Is This Important?

Because detecting prostate cancer as soon as possible is the key to beating it.

Long Story Short

Two German Shepherds tested in Italy were able to detect prostate cancer 90% of the time.

Long Story

If you sported a 'stache for Movember you should know the campaign is meant to encourage men to get checked for prostate cancer. That’s because prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in American men, according to the American Cancer Society. This very year, ACS expects 220,800 American men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in the U.S. and 27,540 will die from the disease. But if you catch the disease early, you’re likelihood of survival is boosted.

Traditionally, a test involves taking urine and blood samples, but it also includes checking the prostate itself, which tends to involve the doctor, a lubricated glove and your rectum.

But scientists in Italy may have come up with a less invasive way of detecting prostate cancer — dogs.

The Guardian reports that a team in Italy had two female German Shepherds sniff urine samples from 900 men, 360 with prostate cancer and 540 without. It turned out that both animals could detect the men with prostate cancer 90% of the time.

“[The results] offer us further proof that dogs have the ability to detect human cancer,” Claire Guest, co-founder of the Medical Detection Dogs charity, told The Guardian. “It is particularly exciting that we have such a high success rate in the detection of prostate cancer, for which the existing tests are woefully inadequate.”

Researchers still don’t know if what the dogs were smelling was a single odor from the cancer or from a mixture of chemicals, but the results are promising.

This isn’t the first time dogs have been useful detectors of cancer. Last month, a dog detected thyroid cancer by only needing to smell the urine and was right 90% of the time.

It appears that man’s best friend might be able to help us in more ways than we once thought.

Own The Conversation

Ask The Big Question: Do you believe we will ever use dogs as a reliable way of detecting cancer?

Disrupt Your Feed: Dogs are nice and cute and all, but I’m not sure if I’m ready to leave my life to old Lassie’s nose.

Drop This Fact: ACS says 1 man in 7 will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime with the average age of diagnosis being 66.
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