Canine detection of cervical cancer
Issues concerning CC detection make it necessary searching for alternatives that help to increase the early screening coverage with greater percentages of sensitivity and specificity in screening and diagnostic tests.
The introduction of methods capable of detecting virtually invisible -a single molecule among a billion or trillions of compounds- changes in the cell through the analysis of cells “odor” have much in their favor in practical applications. In this way, the key could rely upon the poorly explored field of the metabolomics of the cervicovaginal epithelium. Biotechnological and analytical systems such as dogs and analytics as GC-MS may be alternatives to current tests which leaves us with two good panoramas: 1) a laboratory analytical test; 2) a biotechnological field test; both of which use a “volatile biopsy”, basically a scent sample, obtained without penetrating the human body at all. Our work team has proposed a device specifically made for this purpose [46, 47].This device that our research group has developed is a gadget worn by the patient for a defined period, after which is simply stored in a container -provided by us- and mailed to the recipient, avoiding the stress of queuing in a hospital. Our device quickly collects in an unorthodox manner the VOC of the genitourinary tract allowing us, to use analytical devices GC-MS system for sample examination, with the surplus of being simple to dispose of after analysis is done. Each sample being scanned in one hour. Afterwards, the metabolic profile is reviewed by an expert to determine if there are any volatile biomarkers associated with the sample.
In this unorthodox scenario (for some people), this device is scanned by a trainer-dog binomial test carried out in seconds. In such an analysis, our gadget eliminates the shock some people could have by watching a dog “deciding their fate”. Our results in both scenarios show that a sample’s VOC profile result by the analytic test and detected by a trained dog, discriminates between cancerous and non-cancerous samples with more than a 90% sensitivity and specificity.
These data are correlated afterwards to histopathological observation as the gold standard, suggesting that the device has a great value proposition [46, 47].These proposals represent the ideal diagnostic tests for screening CC because they are non-invasive, low cost, accurate and partially portable, therefore meeting the requirements for a good screening test according to WHO. This established that a screening test must be sufficiently accurate to detect the condition earlier than in the absence of screening [48].
Recently another research group in Japan trained a dog to distinguish urine samples from cervical cancer patients from those of the controls, showing that cancer detection by dog sniffing can be a non-invasive, cost-effective screening technique for CC [49]. This report supports our proposal that the canine nose can be used and developed for CC detection.
The use of screening dogs is a real issue, for instance, they play vital roles helping in natural disasters or detecting drug or weapons trafficking as we have mentioned before; in the case of GC-MS itself is used again in the detection of drug trafficking, anti-doping or as a standard test in food products; then, why then should not they be used in the health-care industry? An example is the exhalomic test “Hearts Breath Test for Grade 3 Heart Transplant Rejection detection”. Dr. Phillips et al. at Menssana Research Inc. in New Jersey USA developed this FDA approved test. This test detected a specific metabolomic profile and had opened a vast opportunity in the marketing of metabolomic or volatolomic tests [50].
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