4 Mar 2019

Can dogs help diagnose prostate cancer?

From Afternoons, 1:25 pm on 4 March 2019

A dog's nose is one of the most sensitive in the animal kingdom, capable of sniffing out the equivalent of a single teaspoon of sugar in two Olympic-sized swimming pools of water.

And scientists at the University of Otago want to see if this remarkable sense can be applied to medical science.

They've partnered with the K9 Medical Detection charity to see whether dogs can be trained to sniff out and identify diseases, such as prostate cancer or Legionnaires' disease.

K9 Medical Detection's director Pauline Blomfeld joins us to explain more.

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Photo: 123rf

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