Dogs may help sniff out carriers of virus

Could dogs’ keen sense of smell help screen humans for the coronavirus?

A new study from the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Veterinary Medicine might answer that question as soon as this summer.

Researchers with Penn Vet’s Working Dog Center are enlisting the help of eight dogs — yellow, black and chocolate Labrador retrievers — over a three-week period to expose their sensitive sniffers to COVID-19-positive saliva and urine samples in a laboratory setting. The process is known as odor imprinting.

Once the dogs learn the odor, investigators must show that the canines can discriminate between COVID-19-positive and COVID-19-negative samples. Then, further research can be conducted to see whether the dogs can identify COVID-19 in infected people, including those who are asymptomatic.

With up to 300 million smell receptors, compared with a person’s mere 6 million, a dog’s nose has a lot of sniffing power available. Canines trained through Penn’s Working Dog Center have aided research advances in medical detection.

“Scent-detection dogs can accurately detect low concentrations of volatile organic compounds, otherwise knowns as VOCs, associated with various diseases such as ovarian cancer, bacterial infections, and nasal tumors,” said Cynthia Otto, director of the center and professor of working dog sciences and sports medicine.

If the pilot proves successful, Otto said it could lead to an alternative test and new technology that could expedite coronavirus screening of people.