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What is Medical Detection Dogs?

24th October 2023

Dog's nose best...

There’s a workplace with a difference in Buckinghamshire, where suits and ties are replaced with red jackets and collars and bags are packed with toys and biscuits. Colleagues have four legs and waggy tails and spend their lunchbreaks running, wrestling and getting muddy.

The ‘office’ is a state-of-the-art training facility belonging to the charity, Medical Detection Dogs, and the recruits are specially trained dogs who save lives using their amazing sense of smell.

There are two types of hairy heroes working for the charity. Medical Alert Assistance Dogs support individuals with complex health conditions such as Type 1 diabetes, POTS (postural orthostatic tachychardia syndrome) and non-epileptic seizures by alerting them to an impending life-threatening medical episode. They typically give them a 5-10 minute warning so they can take the necessary action and avoid injury, hospitalization, embarrassment and drama. As well as saving their lives they restore them, by giving them back their confidence and independence.

Bio Detection Dogs are trained to accurately detect the odour of human diseases such as cancer, Parkinson’s disease and E.coli from samples in a training room. This pioneering work could lead to dogs playing an important role in screening for diseases and improving patient care in hospitals. Beyond this, the charity’s vision is to help scientists and medics develop faster, cheaper and non-invasive methods of diagnosis that could impact on thousands of lives.

Did you know?

Dogs are the best biosensors on the planet. They have up to 300 million scent receptors in their noses, compared to a human’s 5 million, and are able to detect odour at parts per trillion. Think a teaspoon of sugar in 2 Olympic-sized swimming pools….

For many of the charity’s clients, there is no technology available to aid them with their condition and they have no idea they are about to become dangerously unwell. But Medical Alert Assistance Dogs are able to quickly and reliably inform them that an episode is imminent, due to a change in their body odour.

COVID - 19

The Bio Detection Dogs are also able to identify the odour of human disease with incredible levels of accuracy. In Phase 1 of a study to train dogs to detect the odour of COVID-19 for example, they could find an infected individual with up to 94% accuracy, and were more reliable than most diagnostic tests available at the time.

Prostate Cancer

Prostate cancer detection dogs’ noses were 71% sensitive – the rate at which the dogs correctly identified positive samples and 73% specific – the rate at which the dogs correctly ignored negative samples including those with other diseases – when detecting Gleason 9 prostate cancer, the most aggressive kind. The dogs also correctly identified when 73% of patient samples did not have the disease. This compares favourably to the most commonly used prostate cancer test, the PSA blood test, and demonstrates how a new screening method based on the dog’s nose could support the PSA test and improve early diagnosis, leading to better health outcomes and saving lives.

Ways to support Medical Detection Dogs

The charity relies on the public’s generosity and goodwill and there are lots of ways you can support this incredible work. Different ways you can help support Medical Detection Dogs are:

Sponsor a puppy from just £5 a month, receiving regular pupdates.
Nominate MDD as your charity of the year so all fundraising efforts contribute to training more dogs.
Join the corporate partnership scheme to gain brand awareness, positive PR, and measurable commercial and marketing benefits to your organisation.
Consider leaving a gift in your Will which will cost you nothing today but will help in years to come.
Volunteer in all sorts of ways, regardless of your postcode.

Secure your place at Goodwoof next year to see the expertise of the Medical Detection Dogs and hear more of their ground-breaking discoveries by booking your early bird tickets now. We hope to see you there next May!

To find out more, have a sniff around www.medicaldetectiondogs.org.uk

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