Dogs Sniff Out Bladder Cancer
(London, Reuters Health, 9/24/04)

For seven months, Carolyn Willis of Amersham Hospital in the UK, and team, trained six dogs to use their sense of smell to identify urine from patients with bladder cancer. After training, each dog was tested by presenting it with seven urine samples—one from a bladder cancer patient and six sex-matched controls. Each dog was tested nine times. The dogs correctly distinguished the bladder cancer urine on average 41% of the time, compared to a 14% success rate which would be expected by chance. These findings suggest that dogs have the ability to recognize the distinctive odors of volatile compounds that tumors produce and that animals may, therefore, be useful in detecting malignant conditions.

(British Medical Journal, September 2004)