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Posted 4/3/2017 10:28 AM (GMT -5)
I've often wondered what neighborhood news my hound, Django, is reading with his nose to the ground on our daily walks. It turns out that dogs can be trained to sniff the presence of prostate cancer in urine. Now a research team is working on using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry on urine samples - and comparing their results with those of trained dogs - in the hope of developing a technique that might decrease the need for biopsies.

“If dogs can smell prostate cancer, we should be able to, too,” says Amanda Siegel, Ph.D., who is presenting the work at the meeting. Both Agarwal and Siegel are at the Integrated Nanosystems Development Institute of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) and the Richard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center.

www.newswise.com/articles/view/671124/?sc=mwtn
Posted 4/3/2017 1:09 PM (GMT -5)
Think of the article linked below as "background material" for appreciating just how amazing the canine sense of smell really is, and how some of the legendary stories about how good a dog's sense of smell is are probably true.

The article is a bit heavy on the anatomy of dogs' sense of smell, but it also presents some fascinating facts, such as:

"… the part of the brain that is dedicated to interpreting smells in the dog is about 40 times more than ours. And according to experts, an average dog can identify scents between 10,000 to 100,000 times better than people."

"Humans have only 5 million scent receptors. Dachshund, 125 million, Fox terrier 147 million, Beagle 225 million, Bloodhound 300 million."

and

Therapy dogs can now detect when blood sugar levels drop in diabetic patients and some are even being used to detect certain cancers in humans.

Yes, some truly amazing stuff about our best friends.

/blog.pawedin.com/dogs/dogs-sense-of-smell/
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