Rresearch review finds scent dogs can successfully sniff out COVID-19, including asymptomatic cases, new variants, and long COVID.
Scent dogs could provide a cheaper, faster, and more effective method of detecting COVID-19, and they could prove crucial in managing future pandemics, according to a new review of recent research. This review, published in De Gruyter’s Journal of Osteopathic Medicine, found that scent dogs perform as well as or even better than conventional COVID-19 tests, such as RT-PCR.
Dogs are equipped with up to 300 million olfactory cells, which significantly surpasses the human count of just 5 or 6 million. In addition, dogs dedicate one-third of their brains to processing scent information, compared to the mere 5% utilized by humans. Dogs trained to identify specific volatile organic compounds produced in the body during illness have been successful in pinpointing patients with certain types of cancer, Parkinson’s disease, and diabetes.