How Dogs are Being Trained to Diagnose Parkinson’s

We know that dogs can help with improving our mental health, but what about our physical health? Dog’s senses are actually so strong that they can sniff out changes in our body to indicate different diseases before we even know about them! Diseases like cancer, neurogenerative, and Parkinson’s all have the opportunity to be sniffed out by your furry friend to help get you in treatment quicker than you may have without your dog’s warning. Read on to learn more about the power of a pooch’s nose:

Human’s Sense of Smell

Parkinson’s researcher, Tilo Kunath, conducted a study with a woman named Joy Milne to see if Parkinson’s disease was actually sniffable and how this phenomenon worked. Milne claimed she was able to notice the difference in the smell of her husband as he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. After the study with Kunath, Milne was able to confidently point out the participants that had the disease. This study lead to curiosity and further research in the field to see if scent really could identify metabolic changes in a human if they had particular diseases, like Parkinson’s. Kunath, and Milne, were able to conduct research that identified different chemical compounds that allowed for the ‘smell’ of Parkinson’s to be more structurally noted.

Dogs and Disease Sniffing

With Kunath and Milne’s discoveries about the scent tracking of disease, researchers began to wonder if dogs, who have 1,000-10,000 times the smelling power of humans, could also sense metabolic changes in humans. Dog trainers who were inspired by the researchers formed the non-profit program Parkinson’s Alert Dogs (PAD) to help train pooches to sniff out disease. The training has helped identify biomarkers left from scents that are then pointed out by the dogs. Since starting PAD, the program has had 25+ dogs trained with a 90% rate of detecting Parkinson’s Disease in humans! These miracle furballs have helped in data tracking and analysis of Parkinson’s scent training since 2017. PAD’s pups continue to operate with the goal of being able to aid in Parkinson’s research development, prevention, and treatment.

How PAD Helps

PAD does its dog sniffing training using an operant conditioning method of research by reinforcing the scents of Parkinson’s (from t-shirts) to teach their pups how to identify the scent easily on humans. These dogs are able to then make “diagnoses” of Parkinson’s after training to be able to thoroughly, and accurately, identify when the disease’s scent is present on a presented shirt. PAD previously focused efforts on being able to identify biomarkers of sebum, but now the non-profit is testing urine. Urine will contain significantly fewer “background scents” compared to a fabric, but will still have linkages to biomarkers for Parkinson’s!

The work Kunath, Milne, and PAD are doing/have done is extremely important in the scientific study and medicinal practice of Parkinson’s disease. These studies and programs prove that dogs are more than just our furry companions, but also help to improve researching important health developments.