Source: Good News Network
Continuing the global battle against malaria, scientists are using a novel tool for the fight: sniffer dogs.
In recent tests, trained sniffer dogs were able to successfully diagnose malaria infections simply by sniffing samples from socks worn briefly by children from a malaria endemic area of West Africa, according to a new study presented today by the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH).
“People with malaria parasites generate distinct odors on their skin and our study found dogs, which have an incredibly sensitive sense of smell, can be trained to detect these odors even when it’s just on an article of clothing worn by an infected person,” said Steven Lindsay, the lead investigator on the study.
The research was conducted in collaboration with experts from Medical Detection Dogs, a charity that trains dogs to detect a variety of maladies, including cancer and people at risk of slipping into a diabetic coma.
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The canine malaria detection work was supported by a Grand Challenges grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is seeking, among other things, new ways of diagnosing the disease that are non-invasive and quick. New tools are urgently needed because, after more than a decade of dramatic reductions in malaria infections and deaths, over the last two years the world has experienced a slight increase in both.
Lindsay said the experiment began in The Gambia where several hundred school children, who had been recruited to join the trial, were checked for overall general health, sampled for malaria parasites and fitted with a pair of socks that they were asked to wear overnight. The next day, the socks were collected. The socks were sorted according to the malaria infection status of the children who had worn them. Only socks from children with malaria who did not have fever were selected, as were the socks from the children who were uninfected. The socks were then shipped to the United Kingdom where they were stored in a freezer for…
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