Highly sensitive scent-detection of COVID-19 patients in vivo by trained dogs

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 16; no. 9; p. e0257474
• Main Authors: Vesga, Omar, Agudelo, Maria, Valencia-Jaramillo, Andrés F., Mira-Montoya, Alejandro, Ossa-Ospina, Felipe, Ocampo, Esteban, Čiuoderis, Karl, Pérez, Laura, Cardona, Andrés, Aguilar, Yudy, Agudelo, Yuli, Hernández-Ortiz, Juan P., Osorio, Jorge E.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 29.09.2021; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Animal training; Animals; Antigens; Biology and Life Sciences; Clinical trials; Consortia; Contamination; Coronaviruses; COVID-19; COVID-19 - diagnosis; COVID-19 vaccines; Detection dogs; Disease transmission; Dogs; Experiments; Female; Health aspects; Health risks; Hospitals; Humans; In vivo methods and tests; Independent variables; Infections; Infectious diseases; Laboratory animals; Male; Mass Screening; Medicine and Health Sciences; Odorants - analysis; Odors; Olfactory receptors; Organic compounds; Pandemics; Patients; Pheromones - analysis; Predictive Value of Tests; SARS-CoV-2 - pathogenicity; Secretions; Sensitivity and Specificity; Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2; Signs and symptoms; Training; Veterinary colleges; Veterinary medicine; Viral diseases; VOCs; Volatile Organic Compounds; Working Dogs; Colombia; United States > US; Wisconsin

Timely and accurate diagnostics are essential to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, but no test satisfies both conditions. Dogs can scent-identify the unique odors of volatile organic compounds generated during infection by interrogating specimens or, ideally, the body of a patient. After training 6 dogs...