Anyone who has ever walked a dog knows that the animals have an exceptional and abiding interest in urine. What we didn't know was that their excretory speciality could have important medical uses. According to new research, it appears that properly trained canines can sniff people-pee and detect prostate cancer. This from the LA Times:
Dr. Jean-Nicolas Cornu of Tenon and his colleagues trained a Belgian Malinois — a shepherd breed that has already been used for detecting bombs and in other cancer tests — to identify urine from patients with confirmed prostate cancer, then to differentiate those samples from urine from healthy subjects. Finally, they used one urine sample from a prostate cancer victim and four samples from healthy people, asking the dog to choose the correct one. In 66 tests, the dog was correct 63 times. There were three false positives and no false negatives. That is, the dog correctly identified all the specimens from prostate cancer patients, but misidentified three from healthy men.
Would Medicare pay for this procedure?