Man's best friend could become a big lifesaver. A study to be published in the March 2006 issue of the journal Integrative Cancer Therapies suggests that canines might be able to sniff out cancer.

To test the theory some scientists hold that cancers produce distinctive odors, researchers led by Tadeusz Jezierski, Sc.D., of the Polish Academy of Sciences, and Michael McCullough of the Pine Street Foundation in San Anselmo, Calif., trained five domestic dogs over a three-week period to recognize the scent of lung and breast cancer in the breath of patients with these conditions. Breath samples from 55 lung cancer patients, 31 breast cancer patients and 83 healthy control patients were then collected in special tubes and presented to the dogs.

The dogs were able to identify breast and lung cancer patients between 88 percent and 97 percent of the time, including instances of early-stage cancer in some patients.

This is not the first time canines' olfactory prowess has been recognized. Dogs typically possess a sense of smell that is 10,000 to 100,000 times sharper than humans. In 1989, doctors reported the case of a collie-Doberman pinscher mix that so persistently sniffed at a mole on the leg of its owner that she contacted her physician, who subsequently identified the lesion as melanoma.

Another study was conducted in 2004 at Amersham Hospital in Buckinghamshire, England, and was first reported in the British Medical Journal. In that study, six dogs underwent training over a seven-month period to identify urine samples belonging to bladder cancer patients. Although not as successful as the aforementioned lung and breast cancer-sniffing team, these dogs correctly identified the bladder cancer samples in 41 percent of cases - a success rate almost three times greater than if left to chance alone.

An intriguing sidebar to this study was that one of the subjects classified as cancer-free was consistently identified by all six dogs as belonging to the cancer group. This prompted retesting of the subject, who was subsequently found to have kidney cancer.

Whether or not canines will become clinical partners in the diagnostic process anytime soon remains to be seen.

"While this is an interesting idea, a larger, more rigorous study is needed to confirm the idea that dogs can be trained to detect cancer," says William Rice, M.D., chief medical officer for Revolution Health Group's Medical Advisory Board. "This study does highlight the possibility that unique volatile compounds may be associated with some cancers and may be useful as another tool for the early detection of cancer."

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