Sniffing out COVID-19

Scientists at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LHTSM), working with the charity Medical Detection Dogs, believe they can train canines to identify people with COVID-19, even if they’re asymptomatic.

The project, which is currently undergoing crowdfunding, hopes to train and deploy dogs as screeners for people with COVID-19 in as little as two months.

Specific

Medical detection dogs can already be trained to detect the presence of cancers, malaria and neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s.

James Logan, head of LSHTM’s Department of Disease Control, said: “We know diseases have odours – including respiratory diseases such as influenza – and that those odours are in fact quite distinct. There is a very, very good chance that COVID-19 has a specific odour, and if it does I am really confident that the dogs would be able to learn that smell and detect it.”

Oxidative stress

The actual source of the detectable scents created by diseases and viruses has not been determined, but Dr Logan’s team believes they may be connected to the oxidative stress caused by infections.

Dr Logan said: “Oxidative stress can release compounds into the blood, which can be released through your breath and skin. We think it may be something to do with the stress response to an infection that causes these different volatile chemicals to be produced, which are released into the blood and become detectable by the dogs. But we don’t know what the mechanism is.”