French researchers, using Belgian Malinois dogs, have discovered that that breed of dog can correctly pick out a man suffering from prostate cancer from sniffing the urine of the victims. The dogs, in 66 tests, sniffed out the sick individual’s urine from a field of 5 corectly 63 times out of 66. This accuracy is far higher than the standard PSA tests, which often given false positives.
Dogs can be trained to detect the characteristic odor of unique chemicals released into urine by prostate tumors according to Dr. Jean-Nicolas Cornu.
This new discovery could very well signal a new way to detect prostate cancer, as there were only 3 false positives and no false negatives when using the trained canines, far lower than PSA tests.
