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Randomized Controlled Trial
. 2021 Jul 27;21(1):707.
doi: 10.1186/s12879-021-06411-1.

Scent dog identification of SARS-CoV-2 infections in different body fluids

Paula Jendrny #  1 , Friederike Twele #  1 , Sebastian Meller #  1 , Claudia Schulz  2 , Maren von Köckritz-Blickwede  2   3 , Albertus Dominicus Marcellinus Eras Osterhaus  2 , Hans Ebbers  4 , Janek Ebbers  4 , Veronika Pilchová  2 , Isabell Pink  5 , Tobias Welte  5 , Michael Peter Manns  6 , Anahita Fathi  7   8   9 , Marylyn Martina Addo  7   8   9 , Christiane Ernst  10 , Wencke Schäfer  11 , Michael Engels  11 , Anja Petrov  12 , Katharina Marquart  12 , Ulrich Schotte  12 , Esther Schalke  11 , Holger Andreas Volk  13
Affiliations
Randomized Controlled Trial

Scent dog identification of SARS-CoV-2 infections in different body fluids

Paula Jendrny et al. BMC Infect Dis. .

Abstract

Background: The main strategy to contain the current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic remains to implement a comprehensive testing, tracing and quarantining strategy until vaccination of the population is adequate. Scent dogs could support current testing strategies.

Methods: Ten dogs were trained for 8 days to detect SARS-CoV-2 infections in beta-propiolactone inactivated saliva samples. The subsequent cognitive transfer performance for the recognition of non-inactivated samples were tested on three different body fluids (saliva, urine, and sweat) in a randomised, double-blind controlled study.

Results: Dogs were tested on a total of 5242 randomised sample presentations. Dogs detected non-inactivated saliva samples with a diagnostic sensitivity of 84% (95% CI: 62.5-94.44%) and specificity of 95% (95% CI: 93.4-96%). In a subsequent experiment to compare the scent recognition between the three non-inactivated body fluids, diagnostic sensitivity and specificity were 95% (95% CI: 66.67-100%) and 98% (95% CI: 94.87-100%) for urine, 91% (95% CI: 71.43-100%) and 94% (95% CI: 90.91-97.78%) for sweat, 82% (95% CI: 64.29-95.24%), and 96% (95% CI: 94.95-98.9%) for saliva respectively.

Conclusions: The scent cognitive transfer performance between inactivated and non-inactivated samples as well as between different sample materials indicates that global, specific SARS-CoV-2-associated volatile compounds are released across different body secretions, independently from the patient's symptoms. All tested body fluids appear to be similarly suited for reliable detection of SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals.

Keywords: SARS-CoV-2; Saliva; Scent detection dogs; Sweat; Urine; Volatile organic compounds.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Median diagnostic specificity and sensitivity for all dogs for non-inactivated sweat (green triangle), urine (yellow square), and saliva (blue circle) samples, respectively. The 95% confidence intervals of the medians for specificity and sensitivity are shown with horizontal and vertical bars, respectively
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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