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Scent dog identification of samples from COVID-19 patients - a pilot study.
- Source :
- BMC Infectious Diseases; 7/23/2020, Vol. 20 Issue 1, p1-7, 7p, 2 Charts, 1 Graph
- Publication Year :
- 2020
-
Abstract
- <bold>Background: </bold>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.<bold>Methods: </bold>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.<bold>Results: </bold>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.<bold>Conclusions: </bold>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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Subjects :
- COVID-19
COVID-19 pandemic
SARS-CoV-2
ODORS
DETECTOR dogs
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 14712334
- Volume :
- 20
- Issue :
- 1
- Database :
- Complementary Index
- Journal :
- BMC Infectious Diseases
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 144730182
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1186/s12879-020-05281-3