Scent dog identification of samples from COVID-19 patients \u2013 a pilot study

Paula Jendrny,Holger Andreas Volk,Anahita Fathi,Esther Schalke,Christiane Ernst,Janek Ebbers,Claudia Schulz,Marylyn Martina Addo,Sebastian Meller,Veronika Pilchová,Albertus Dominicus Marcellinus Eras Osterhaus,Friederike Twele,Isabell Pink,Maren Von Köckritz-Blickwede,Michael Peter Manns,Tobias Welte

doi:10.1186/s12879-020-05281-3

Abstract

BackgroundAs the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread, early, ideally real-time, identification of SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals is pivotal in interrupting infection chains. Volatile organic compounds produced during respiratory infections can cause specific scent imprints, which can be detected by trained dogs with a high rate of precision.MethodsEight detection dogs were trained for 1 week to detect saliva or tracheobronchial secretions of SARS-CoV-2 infected patients in a randomised, double-blinded and controlled study.ResultsThe dogs were able to discriminate between samples of infected (positive) and non-infected (negative) individuals with average diagnostic sensitivity of 82.63% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 82.02–83.24%) and specificity of 96.35% (95% CI: 96.31–96.39%). During the presentation of 1012 randomised samples, the dogs achieved an overall average detection rate of 94% (±3.4%) with 157 correct indications of positive, 792 correct rejections of negative, 33 incorrect indications of negative or incorrect rejections of 30 positive sample presentations.ConclusionsThese preliminary findings indicate that trained detection dogs can identify respiratory secretion samples from hospitalised and clinically diseased SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals by discriminating between samples from SARS-CoV-2 infected patients and negative controls. This data may form the basis for the reliable screening method of SARS-CoV-2 infected people.

Highlights

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread, early, ideally real-time, identification of SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals is pivotal in interrupting infection chains
SARS-CoV-2 infected patients and negative controls. This data may form the basis for the reliable screening method of SARS-CoV-2 infected people
Current testing regimens usually require nasopharyngeal swabs applied by a trained person and a reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction test (RT-PCR) for pathogen identification

Summary

Introduction

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread, early, ideally real-time, identification of SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals is pivotal in interrupting infection chains. Volatile organic compounds produced during respiratory infections can cause specific scent imprints, which can be detected by trained dogs with a high rate of precision. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic highlights the importance of fast and reliable testing for accurate identification of symptomatic and asymptomatic carriers to reduce spread of infection effectively [1]. Current testing regimens usually require nasopharyngeal swabs applied by a trained person and a reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction test (RT-PCR) for pathogen identification. Several studies have proven the canines’ extraordinary olfactory acuity to detect persons with infectious and non-infectious diseases like different types of cancer [2], malaria [3], bacterial, and viral infections [4,5,6], with usually high rates of sensitivity and specificity [7]. A pathogen-specific odour that can be detected by dogs

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