01 December 2019
Kiwi Sniffer Dog to be trialled in Bowel Cancer detection study
Bowel Cancer Foundation Trust CEO Georgina Mason says a New Zealand cancer screening trial, using specifically trained
dogs to identify bowel cancer in urine, could help to save lives through early detection.
The charities own trial is being sponsored by the Lindsay Foundation and will be undertaken by the K9 Medical Detection
NZ Charitable Trust and Otago University between January 2020 and January 2022. The study will be conducted using ‘Levi’
- an adult German Shepherd who has received basic training in readiness for medical scent detection work. A second
medical detection dog will also be added to the study.
Levi will take around a year to train to be able to detect various concentration levels of bowel cancer in saline
samples followed by a second study in which he will be trained and tested in his ability to detect bowel cancer in
urine.
Ms Mason says that a successful trial could provide a ‘significant breakthrough’ as more extensive screening is ‘badly
needed’ and could pave the way to thousands more early detections.
“Overseas studies have found evidence of urinary biomarkers in bowel cancer patients which we’re expecting the dogs to
be able to pick up in our early stage detection trial.”
“Bowel Cancer is currently the most commonly diagnosed cancer in New Zealand with around 3,000 people diagnosed with it,
and 1,200 dying from it, every year”.
“Up to 90% of people can be saved if bowel cancer is detected early enough – but the existing National Bowel Cancer
Screening Programme is currently only available for 60–74 year olds and probably won’t be available in all District
Health Board areas in New Zealand until 2021”.
“Even when the screening programme is fully rolled out it is only expected to detect between 500 and 700 cases of bowel
cancer a year – which only accounts for around 36% of the cases of bowel cancer which are registered annually with the
Ministry of Health”.
Miss Mason says that more people could be saved if we can help prioritise those who need urgent treatment.
“A large number of people with a positive FIT (faecal immune) test don’t have cancer or high risk polyps which means
that this test will enable us to make better use of resources by prioritising those patients that would more likely have
bowel cancer and need urgent treatment”.
“This test could also be useful for applications outside of the screening programme to eliminate bowel cancer in
patients who present with non-specific symptoms or who are under the age of screening and free up our struggling
workforce”.
“We are extremely grateful to the Lindsay Foundation who have funded the first half of this trial. Their love of animals
and desire to make an impact in Health has made them a perfect fit for our research programme”.
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