Dog Savior: Immediate Scent-Detection of SARS-COV-2 by Trained Dogs

  1. Omar Vesga
  2. Andres F. Valencia
  3. Alejandro Mira
  4. Felipe Ossa
  5. Esteban Ocampo
  6. Maria Agudelo
  7. Karl Čiuoderis
  8. Laura Perez
  9. Andres Cardona
  10. Yudy Aguilar
  11. Javier M. González
  12. Juan C. Cataño
  13. Yuli Agudelo
  14. Juan P. Hernández-Ortiz
  15. Jorge E. Osorio

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Abstract

Molecular tests for viral diagnostics are essential to confront the COVID-19 pandemic, but their production and distribution cannot satisfy the current high demand. Early identification of infected people and their contacts is the key to being able to isolate them and prevent the dissemination of the pathogen; unfortunately, most countries are unable to do this due to the lack of diagnostic tools. Dogs can identify, with a high rate of precision, unique odors of volatile organic compounds generated during an infection; as a result, dogs can diagnose infectious agents by smelling specimens and, sometimes, the body of an infected individual. We trained six dogs of three different breeds to detect SARS-CoV-2 in respiratory secretions of infected patients and evaluated their performance experimentally, comparing it against the gold standard (rRT-PCR). Here we show that viral detection takes one second per specimen. After scent-interrogating 9,200 samples, our six dogs achieved independently and as a group very high sensitivity, specificity, predictive values, accuracy, and likelihood ratio, with very narrow confidence intervals. The highest metric was the negative predictive value, indicating that with a disease prevalence of 7.6%, 99.9% of the specimens indicated as negative by the dogs did not carry the virus. These findings demonstrate that dogs could be useful to track viral infection in humans, allowing COVID-19 free people to return to work safely.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.06.17.158105: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    RandomizationFor every experiment, the position of the samples (1 to 100) and the prevalence (1% to 10%) of the virus specimens within the negative controls were randomized with a mobile phone.
    BlindingDuring experimentation, the trainers were blinded regarding the position and number of positive specimens.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variableFour Belgian Malinois aged six to 36 months, three females and one male (Andromeda, Nina, Timo, and Vika), one 36 month-old mixed Nordic female (Vita, first-generation Alaskan Malamute by Siberian Husky), and one male pit bull (Niño, unknown age) were trained and used to diagnose COVID-19.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Despite all the caveats, it might be worth a try.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No funding statement was detected.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.06.17.158105v1 on bioRxiv