Dog Trained To Detect Thyroid Cancer 'with 88% Accuracy'

[Boronia]

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Frankie the dog delivers the diagnosis through smelling patients' urine samples, according to a study conducted by the Arkansas University for Medical Sciences.

German shepherd mix Frankie, a formerly stray dog rescued in Little Rock, Arkansas, was trained to diagnosis thyroid cancer through scent imprinting. Photograph: AM Hinson/BBC Jessica Glenza in New York

A group of researchers in Arkansas have trained a dog to detect thyroid cancer by smelling patients' urine samples.

The german shepherd-mix named Frankie predicted with 88% accuracy which patients had thyroid cancer and which had a benign disease. The formerly stray pup was rescued from a busy street in Little Rock, Arkansas.

The study is researchers' first crack at using canines to diagnose thyroid cancer through scent imprinting – a way of training dogs to recognize a particular smell. It follows an earlier study that showed dogs could reliably distinguish between the urine samples of healthy people and those with cancer.

"We've all looked at it from a skeptical, scientific standpoint, but the data just keeps leading us to the fact that this has remarkable clinical potential," said Arny Ferrando, one of the lead researchers, said in a press release from Arkansas University for Medical Sciences, where the study was conducted.

Over six months, researchers at UAMS scent-imprinted Frankie with samples of blood, tissue and urine from patients with cancerous thyroid growths. Frankie was trained to turn away when benign thyroid disease was smelled, and lie down at the scent of metastatic thyroid carcinoma, a common thyroid cancer.

Researchers gave Frankie samples of patients who came to the university clinic with symptoms of thyroid cancer. The results of Frankie's diagnosis, which was blinded to researchers, was compared with surgical pathologies, according to the study.

Of 34 patients, Frankie accurately predicted the diagnosis 30 times.

"Detecting and diagnosing thyroid cancer can be difficult, because it's often looking for a very small number of occurrences in a very large background of benign nodules. It is also difficult to say with certainty that a patient is cancer-free after surgery," said Donald Bodenner, director of the thyroid center at the university and chief of endocrine oncology, in a statement. He was also a lead researcher in the study.

AdvertisementThyroid cancer is one of the fastest-growing cancer diagnoses worldwide, though the death rate has remained stable for years – leading some to believe that doctors are detecting growths that don't need treatment. Diagnosis rates have risen especially fast in countries such as South Korea where health officials have started mass screening.

Compared with other cancers in the United States, thyroid cancer has a relatively low death rate. The American Cancer Society predicts that the cancer, which grows in the thyroid gland located in the neck, will result in 1,950 deaths in 2015, most of which (about two out of three) are diagnosed in people younger than 55.

"Having a technique with which to do these things with a higher degree of certainty would be a tremendous advance in thyroid cancer," he said.

Researchers said they were interested in the future in determining what olfactory elements are present in the samples that allows Frankie to determine which are cancerous. Dogs' sense of smell is often cited as being up to 100,000 times more acute than that of humans, according to PBS.

The findings were presented at the Endocrine Society's annual conference Endo.