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PLoS One

Title:		Discrimination of SARS-CoV-2 infected patient samples by detection dogs: A proof of concept study
Author(s):		Essler JL; Kane SA; Nolan P; Akaho EH; Berna AZ; DeAngelo A; Berk RA; Kaynaroglu P; Plymouth VL; Frank ID; Weiss SR; Odom John AR; Otto CM;
Address:		"Penn Vet Working Dog Center, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States of America. Tactical Directional Canine, Smithsburg, MD, United States of America. Department of Pediatrics, The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States of America. Department of Criminology, School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States of America. Department of Statistics, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States of America. Department of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA, United States of America. Department of Microbiology, Penn Center for Research on Coronaviruses and Other Emerging Pathogens, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA, United States of America. Department of Clinical Sciences and Advanced Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States of America"
Journal Title:		PLoS One
Year:		2021
Volume:		20210414
Issue:		4
Page Number:		e0250158 -
DOI:		10.1371/journal.pone.0250158
ISSN/ISBN:		1932-6203 (Electronic) 1932-6203 (Linking)
Abstract:		"While the world awaits a widely available COVID-19 vaccine, availability of testing is limited in many regions and can be further compounded by shortages of reagents, prolonged processing time and delayed results. One approach to rapid testing is to leverage the volatile organic compound (VOC) signature of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Detection dogs, a biological sensor of VOCs, were utilized to investigate whether SARS-CoV-2 positive urine and saliva patient samples had a unique odor signature. The virus was inactivated in all training samples with either detergent or heat treatment. Using detergent-inactivated urine samples, dogs were initially trained to find samples collected from hospitalized patients confirmed with SARS-CoV-2 infection, while ignoring samples collected from controls. Dogs were then tested on their ability to spontaneously recognize heat-treated urine samples as well as heat-treated saliva from hospitalized SARS-CoV-2 positive patients. Dogs successfully discriminated between infected and uninfected urine samples, regardless of the inactivation protocol, as well as heat-treated saliva samples. Generalization to novel samples was limited, particularly after intensive training with a restricted sample set. A unique odor associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection present in human urine as well as saliva, provides impetus for the development of odor-based screening, either by electronic, chemical, or biological sensing methods. The use of dogs for screening in an operational setting will require training with a large number of novel SARS-CoV-2 positive and confirmed negative samples"
Keywords:		Animals COVID-19/*diagnosis/urine COVID-19 Testing/*methods Dogs Female Humans Male Mass Screening Proof of Concept Study SARS-CoV-2/isolation & purification Saliva/chemistry Specimen Handling/methods Volatile Organic Compounds/chemistry Working Dogs/*psy;
Notes:		"MedlineEssler, Jennifer L Kane, Sarah A Nolan, Pat Akaho, Elikplim H Berna, Amalia Z DeAngelo, Annemarie Berk, Richard A Kaynaroglu, Patricia Plymouth, Victoria L Frank, Ian D Weiss, Susan R Odom John, Audrey R Otto, Cynthia M eng R61 HD105594/HD/NICHD NIH HHS/ R21 AI144472/AI/NIAID NIH HHS/ WT_/Wellcome Trust/United Kingdom R21 AI154370/AI/NIAID NIH HHS/ Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't 2021/04/15 PLoS One. 2021 Apr 14; 16(4):e0250158. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0250158. eCollection 2021"