'Lab' testing - could dogs smell ME/CFS?

Hutan

Hutan

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(The 'lab' in the title refers to labradors.)
Kalliope said:
ABC Net - When Covid Won't go away

What support should be on offer for the so-called COVID long haulers? Some patients who have recovered from the acute phase of the disease have found themselves still struggling with symptoms ranging from severe exhaustion and lung damage to cardiac issues and brain fog. And sniffer dogs are proving themselves to be so adept at detecting coronavirus sufferers, they've been picking up the disease in people who haven't even begun to display any symptoms
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I've heard that dogs are able to smell cancer and some other health problems. When I heard about dogs being able to identify people infected with Covid-19, I wondered about dogs perhaps being able to smell ME/CFS. I heard the Covid-detecting dogs identify sweat or saliva from people with Covid versus the sweat or saliva from people without.

It would be interesting to give it a try, probably taking the sample during PEM. There have been less plausible approaches to diagnosis.
 
Perhaps they need the aroma of the "night-sweats". I recall reading that the aroma of "perspiration" in brucellosis patients was highly distinctive.

Mind you, it would be a clever dog that could sniff out a psychological problem.

Perhaps costs could be reduced further by training those award winning giant rats we have heard of lately.
 
Medical Detection Dogs said:
Medical Detection Dogs, in collaboration with Manchester University and Edinburgh University, has been working on a ground-breaking proof of principle study which has determined that dogs can detect Parkinson’s disease, possibly many years before symptoms start to show.

Our dogs have tested several hundred samples, and were trained to respond with simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ indications. These results were very positive and will enable our collaborators in the next stage of this research to hone in on the specific chemical linked to Parkinson’s.

In the next stage of the study our collaborators will use mass spectrometers to split samples into their component molecules to hone in on the specific chemical linked to Parkinson’s. We will then present the dogs with each component part so they can identify the key chemical indicator for Parkinson’s.

Our goal is to develop a definitive way to diagnose Parkinson’s disease. This will contribute to developing earlier, more effective treatment, and will open the door to further research into the cause and progression of this debilitating disease.
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Thanks, Barry. It sounds really good, doesn't it. So the end point isn't lots of detector dogs; instead the dogs help to identify a biomarker molecule.

I see the organisation has been given government funding to train up the Covid-detecting dogs - that would be so useful if it worked. I wonder if the UK government could be persuaded to fund an ME/CFS or post-covid syndrome detection project with the organisation.
 
chrisb said:
Perhaps they need the aroma of the "night-sweats". I recall reading that the aroma of "perspiration" in brucellosis patients was highly distinctive.

Mind you, it would be a clever dog that could sniff out a psychological problem.

Perhaps costs could be reduced further by training those award winning giant rats we have heard of lately.
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Ah yes. But if the dogs can sniff out a psychological problem wouldn't there be a conflict of interest if therapy dogs are used in treatment? ;)
 
Hutan said:
(The 'lab' in the title refers to labradors.)


I've heard that dogs are able to smell cancer and some other health problems. When I heard about dogs being able to identify people infected with Covid-19, I wondered about dogs perhaps being able to smell ME/CFS. I heard the Covid-detecting dogs identify sweat or saliva from people with Covid versus the sweat or saliva from people without.

It would be interesting to give it a try, probably taking the sample during PEM. There have been less plausible approaches to diagnosis.
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Trained dogs are already used at the airport of Helsinki, Finland.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemima...i-airport-to-sniff-out-covid-19/#14e452b57331
 
Helen said:
Trained dogs are already used at the airport of Helsinki, Finland.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemima...i-airport-to-sniff-out-covid-19/#14e452b57331
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The outcome of this trial run will be the real crunch. Would be excellent if it works. When they say the dogs only need a week's training, I presume by that they mean they are already trained medical detection dogs, who then get a week's specific Covid 19 training. Would be extremely interesting if they could distinguish between Covid 19 and other infections.
 
Re: 'Lab' Testing

I once saw video of a doctor advertising his practice. He concluded by saying something like "And for your convenience, we have our own on-site lab."

Cut to shot of happy Labrador Retriever sitting in the waiting room.
 
Barry said:
The outcome of this trial run will be the real crunch. Would be excellent if it works. When they say the dogs only need a week's training, I presume by that they mean they are already trained medical detection dogs, who then get a week's specific Covid 19 training. Would be extremely interesting if they could distinguish between Covid 19 and other infections.
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They can. It was on Scandinavian TV some days ago. The trained dogs had found arrivals at the International airport with COVID 19. Testing for the virus confirmed ongoing infections. This is big, isn´t it?

@JES, maybe you can tell us more?
 
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Nice idea. What with all our metabolic changes it might very well work, too, eventually, just as soon as we have figured out a way to diagnose ME with much more certainty than the current diagnostic criteria can provide. Thing is you have to train the dogs - or rats* for that matter: imagine every GP clinic having a team of trained rats roaming the waiting room, that should reduce healthcare costs if nothing else, through drastically reduced GP visits, unless the BPS folks got in on it and set up rat-trauma or rat-desensitisation CBT clinics :p - right, where was I? Ah yes, you have to train dogs on samples of definitive ME, possibly even specifically on samples of definite ME with or without PEM.

Still, could be worth trying with a very narrowly defined group of pwME, maybe some with definite viral onset who've also had very clear CPET results and, if the dogs can find something to reliably distinguish them from definite non-ME cases, one could then work outwards from there, in a way testing what's really relevant in our current diagnostic criteria. The possibility of subgroups in ME could confound things though.

Could also be interesting to see if dogs trained on one sort of post-viral syndrome, assuming that's possible, would also indicate when presented with samples of different post-viral or post-infectious syndromes, and samples of ME.

* For those who missed @chrisb's reference, recently an explosive-sniffer rat was awarded a medal for its services.And, actually it would be kind of nice for 'lab' rats to be given a more agreeable task than forced swimming and other torture.
 
since the world of medicine choses not to believe what patients tell them why would they believe in the dogs . also in many of the first years of having m e my body had a distinctive coppery odour i don't know if this is common .
 
alktipping said:
since the world of medicine choses not to believe what patients tell them why would they believe in the dogs
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Maybe they think dogs don't have false illness beliefs?

Some slightly tongue in cheek ideas here:

1) Get a medical detection dog charity excited about ME. Somehow...
This lot for example works with researchers at the University of Otago (Prof Tate's uni) on cancer detection.
https://www.k9md.org.nz/

2) Train your own dog:
https://store.huntersheart.com/Scent_Detection_Foundation_Online_Dog_Training_C_p/sdf.htm

3) Train a rat or three, apparently it takes 9 months for them to learn how to detect TB reliably, not sure if that's faster or slower than a dog (but in any case a rat would be cheaper to feed):
https://www.apopo.org/en/what-we-do/detecting-tuberculosis/how-we-do-it/tb-detection-rat-training
 
Going into a straight line until you crash into something, not sure that's an approved driving technique, and fairly sure that if human that rat would end up in prison.

It's also not a car, it's a plastic sweet jar on wheels, with no obvious means of steering, which may explain the fairground driving technique.
 
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