Abstract
The aim of this proof-of-concept study was to evaluate if trained dogs could discriminate between sweat samples from symptomatic COVID-19 positive individuals (SARS-CoV-2 PCR positive) and those from asymptomatic COVID-19 negative individuals. The study was conducted at 2 sites (Paris, France, and Beirut, Lebanon), followed the same training and testing protocols, and involved six detection dogs (three explosive detection dogs, one search and rescue dog, and two colon cancer detection dogs). A total of 177 individuals were recruited for the study (95 symptomatic COVID-19 positive and 82 asymptomatic COVID-19 negative individuals) from five hospitals, and one underarm sweat sample per individual was collected. The dog training sessions lasted between one and three weeks. Once trained, the dog had to mark the COVID-19 positive sample randomly placed behind one of three or four olfactory cones (the other cones contained at least one COVID-19 negative sample and between zero and two mocks). During the testing session, a COVID-19 positive sample could be used up to a maximum of three times for one dog. The dog and its handler were both blinded to the COVID-positive sample location. The success rate per dog (i.e., the number of correct indications divided by the number of trials) ranged from 76% to 100%. The lower bound of the 95% confidence interval of the estimated success rate was most of the time higher than the success rate obtained by chance after removing the number of mocks from calculations. These results provide some evidence that detection dogs may be able to discriminate between sweat samples from symptomatic COVID-19 individuals and those from asymptomatic COVID-19 negative individuals. However, due to the limitations of this proof-of-concept study (including using some COVID-19 samples more than once and potential confounding biases), these results must be confirmed in validation studies.
Highlights
The “One Health—One Medicine” concept is currently more important than ever as it is bringing medical doctors, veterinary surgeons, epidemiologists, and dog handlers together to share their knowledge and experience in an attempt to combat the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic
A total of 95 symptomatic COVID-19 positive individuals and 82 asymptomatic COVID-19 negative individuals were recruited for the study, producing 177 sweat samples for the use in the study trials
The Paris site study sample consisted of 27 symptomatic COVID-19 positive individuals and 34 asymptomatic COVID-19 negative individuals
Summary
The “One Health—One Medicine” concept is currently more important than ever as it is bringing medical doctors, veterinary surgeons, epidemiologists, and dog handlers together to share their knowledge and experience in an attempt to combat the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. In June 2020, some European countries managed to control the COVID-19 epidemic by maintaining a low number of COVID-19 positive cases. In this context, the timing of testing is crucial. Some studies involving detection dogs suggested that detection of non-infectious diseases by dogs was comparable with standard diagnostic methods [3], especially for cancer detection [4, 5]. Regarding other non-infectious diseases, several studies have suggested that dogs can be used as “alert dogs” for diabetic [20,21,22] and epileptic patients [23], to improve patient quality of life
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