| Title: | Scent dog identification of samples from COVID-19 patients - a pilot study |
| Author(s): | Jendrny P; Schulz C; Twele F; Meller S; von Kockritz-Blickwede M; Osterhaus A; Ebbers J; Pilchova V; Pink I; Welte T; Manns MP; Fathi A; Ernst C; Addo MM; Schalke E; Volk HA; |
| Address: | "Department of Small Animal Medicine and Surgery, University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover, Hannover, Germany. Research Center for Emerging Infections and Zoonoses, University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover, Hannover, Germany. Department of Physiological Chemistry, University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover, Hannover, Germany. , Horstel, Germany. Department of Respiratory Medicine, Hannover Medical School, Hannover, Germany. Hannover Medical School, Hannover, Germany. Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases, University Medical-Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany. Department for Clinical Immunology of Infectious Diseases, Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine, Hamburg, Germany. German Center for Infection Research, Hamburg-Lubeck, Borstel-Riems, Germany. Central Institute of Medical Service, German Armed Forces, Koblenz, Germany. Bundeswehr School of Dog handling, German Armed Forces, Ulmen, Germany. Department of Small Animal Medicine and Surgery, University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover, Hannover, Germany. holger.volk@tiho-hannover.de" |
| DOI: | 10.1186/s12879-020-05281-3 |
| ISSN/ISBN: | 1471-2334 (Electronic) 1471-2334 (Linking) |
| Abstract: | "BACKGROUND: 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. METHODS: Eight 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. RESULTS: The 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. CONCLUSIONS: These 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" |
| Keywords: | Animals Betacoronavirus/*isolation & purification Bronchi/chemistry/virology Covid-19 Case-Control Studies Coronavirus Infections/*diagnosis/*virology Dogs Double-Blind Method Humans Mass Screening/*methods Odorants/*analysis Pandemics/prevention & contro; |
| Notes: | "MedlineJendrny, Paula Schulz, Claudia Twele, Friederike Meller, Sebastian von Kockritz-Blickwede, Maren Osterhaus, Albertus Dominicus Marcellinus Erasmus Ebbers, Janek Pilchova, Veronika Pink, Isabell Welte, Tobias Manns, Michael Peter Fathi, Anahita Ernst, Christiane Addo, Marylyn Martina Schalke, Esther Volk, Holger Andreas eng Randomized Controlled Trial England 2020/07/25 BMC Infect Dis. 2020 Jul 23; 20(1):536. doi: 10.1186/s12879-020-05281-3" |
