Dogs detect multiple cancers in breath samples with over 90% accuracy Dogs can detect multiple cancers in breath samples with over 90% accuracy, world’s largest study finds A study co-authored by Medical Detection Dogs and carried out by frontier R&D tech company, Dognosis, has found that dogs can detect multiple cancer types from breath collected in surgical face masks. A team of seven dogs sniffed early-stage cancers such as head and neck, breast, lung and thoracic, gynaecologic, gastrointestinal and genitourinary with sensitivity and specificity above 90%. The results of the study, carried out in India, have been published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (link below) today and prove the potential for a non-invasive, low-cost screening tool that could transform early cancer detection. Medical Detection Dogs has successfully proved that dogs can detect the odour of diseases like prostate and bladder cancer, Parkinson’s disease, malaria, COVID-19 and Pseudomonas. The charity played a key role in the conceptualisation and design of the study, advising Dognosis on investigating whether dogs could be the answer to low-cost, high sensitivity triage testing to address low cancer prevalence in population screening, particularly in countries with limited healthcare resources. The study was conducted across six hospitals in India, with 1,502 people in the final test group (283 with biopsy-confirmed cancer and 1,219 healthy, non-oncologic chronic disease, and benign biopsy volunteers). Other information recorded about participant samples included tobacco use, time since food was last consumed and morning versus afternoon. Dog decisions on samples and participant information were combined with advance statistical Bayesian fusion framework modelling to improve accuracy, stability and reproducibility in the results. India faces rising cancer incidence while only 1% of people are ever screened and those that are tested generate large number of false positives, stretching already limited diagnostic resources. The study’s authors believe that because breath collection and canine detection are non-invasive and low cost, canine teams could plausibly support scalable population-level multicancer triage. Claire Guest, Medical Detection Dogs CEO and Chief Scientific Officer, says: “ We were delighted to collaborate with Dognosis to advise and support in the training of dogs to detect multiple cancers by odour. The results are staggering yet not surprising to us - dogs have proved time and again that their ability to detect disease is superior to any other current options. We hope these results can be used to help advance and speed up diagnostic resources and screen many more people around the world." Akash Kulgod, Dognosis Co-Founder and CEO, says: "We’ve known for over two decades from multiple peer-reviewed publications that dogs are capable of detecting multiple types of cancers with high accuracy. The challenge has always been building a system around canine olfaction that is reproducible, scalable, and aimed at a clinical problem worth solving. Multi-cancer risk stratification from a single breath sample is that problem, especially in countries like India, and this study shows that it can be done.” Title: Canine Olfaction Combined With Bayesian Modeling for Multicancer Detection From Breath Samples: A Phase II Study in IndiaJournal: Journal of Clinical OncologyDOI: https://doi.org/10.1200/JCO-25-02310Funding: Supported by Dognosis India Pvt. Ltd.Collaborators: Medical Detection Dogs, Institutions in India, the United Kingdom, and Dognosis Inc. Manage Cookie Preferences