{"id":8032,"date":"2016-03-15T21:50:30","date_gmt":"2016-03-16T01:50:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/?p=8032"},"modified":"2016-03-19T15:31:57","modified_gmt":"2016-03-19T19:31:57","slug":"dogs-again-shown-to-be-brilliant-diagnosticians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/dogs-again-shown-to-be-brilliant-diagnosticians\/2016\/03\/15\/","title":{"rendered":"Dogs Again Are Brilliant Diagnosticians"},"content":{"rendered":"

The reputation of dogs in the ID world got a big boost when Dutch researchers published\u00a0this\u00a0remarkable study of Cliff<\/a> — a beagle who was trained to “diagnose” C diff<\/em>\u00a0using\u00a0his superior olfactory abilities.<\/p>\n

(A couple of entertaining\u00a0videos here<\/a>, if you can’t get enough of this stuff. I can’t.)<\/p>\n

Now, in the pages of Open Forum Infectious Diseases<\/em> (IDSA’s open access journal, of which I’m editor), we’ve published another landmark study<\/a>\u00a0demonstrating the extraordinary\u00a0sniffing powers of our\u00a0best friends:<\/p>\n

\"Detection_of_Bacteriuria_by_Canine_Olfaction\"<\/a><\/p>\n

From the paper:<\/p>\n

In this double-blinded case-control validation study, we obtained fresh urine samples daily in a consecutive case series over 16 weeks. Dogs were trained to distinguish urine samples that were culture-positive for bacteriuria from those of culture-negative controls, using reward-based clicker\/treat methods …Dogs detected urine samples positive for 100,000 cfu\/mL E. coli<\/em> (N=250 trials; sensitivity 99.6%, specificity 91.5%).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Impressive! Not only that, but the pooches\u00a0did equally well with other bacteria — Klebsiella<\/em>, enterococcus, Staph aureus.\u00a0<\/em>An anecdote in the Discussion section of the paper highlighted the real-world performance of Abe (he’s a dog) when a sick person visited the training center — I encourage you to read the full paper<\/a>\u00a0(which is on OFID’s\u00a0early access page) for the details. Not only that, but there’s an action shot of the experimental methods.<\/p>\n

So how do the dogs do so well at this task? To start, it is estimated that a dog’s\u00a0nose is\u00a0over 100,000 times more sensitive than ours.\u00a0Plus, there’s this astute comment from my Twitter feed:<\/p>\n

\"twitter<\/a><\/p>\n

Indeed, this diagnostic task is right in the “sweet spot”, as it were, of a dog’s abilities. As the paper notes, “Sniffing urine is innate behavior in dogs.”<\/p>\n

Practice makes perfect. Woof!<\/p>\n

[youtube http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=L4o68eyT26w]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The reputation of dogs in the ID world got a big boost when Dutch researchers published\u00a0this\u00a0remarkable study of Cliff — a beagle who was trained to “diagnose” C diff\u00a0using\u00a0his superior olfactory abilities. (A couple of entertaining\u00a0videos here, if you can’t get enough of this stuff. I can’t.) Now, in the pages of Open Forum Infectious […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5,8,10],"tags":[283,1122,961],"class_list":["post-8032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-care","category-infectious-diseases","category-patient-care","category-research","tag-dogs","tag-urinary-tract-infections","tag-uti"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8032\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}