You have posed an interesting question. Personally, I would not be surprised at all if dogs can sniff out when diabetes is not well controlled since is it not likely that volatiles will be increased?  I look forward to 07 November for clarification.

There is quite a literature that dogs can use their noses to detect skin, bladder, lung, ovarian and breast cancers. Recently, Marine, an eight-year-old black Labrador at Kyushu University in Japan, was shown to be really good at detecting bowel cancer.  The paper - Sonoda H, et al. Colorectal cancer screening with odour material by canine scent detection. Gut 2011;50:814-9 (open access!) - is a really great read. It is a beautifully written piece, in my view.

I understand that there is research going on to develop “artificial noses”. But I suspect that we in laboratory medicine won’t be out of jobs soon!

Callum G Fraser
Centre for Research into Cancer Prevention and Screening
University of Dundee
Scotland

Hello, I'm not aware whether dogs can detect hypoglycemia but I remember that I read a report about dogs detecting cancer.
Maybe there is some link between both?

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/01/0112_060112_dog_cancer.html

Thanks,

Thomas

I have several patients whose lives have been saved by their dog. These patients had severe episodes of hypoglycemia and their dog detected this and woke them up. One of them woke up to their dog sitting on top of them .  In another instance, the patient woke up covered in dog saliva. The common dog breed
that detected the hypoglycemia is a chocolate lab.  SR

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Dogs have been trained to detect the problem from t Shirts worn by people having a hypoglycemic attack. The study was done in Australia by Dr Alan Stocks. There are attempts being made to identify the compound the dogs detect. The dogs do not need to detect breath, but can detect a chemical that is present on the surface of the body when having a hypo.

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I am a trainer of service dogs and yes, service dogs can be trained to detect low blood sugar levels.  They are also trained to detect impending seizures, used is Parkinson's disease for stabilization and tremors, and have even been trained to sniff out cancer.  They are wonderful creatures and we have only scratched the surface of what things they can help us with.

Sharon Hall, MT(ASCP)SH
Hearts of Gold Service Dogs Volunteer

There has been some work by Queen's University in Belfast indicating dogs may be able to detect their type 1 diabetic owners hypoglycemia. There have also been reports of dogs being able to detect melanoma as well as bladder cancer. Dogs have a very highly developed sense of smell, and are extremely tuned in to their owners behavior, so I see no reason why they wouldn't make excellent diagnosticians! However, like many of our synthetic doagnostic tools, specificity of the "doggy nose" test in a random population I expect would be low because of the many inter-individual variations.
 
Bonny Van
Marion Co Public Health Department
Indianapolis, IN

I have no doubt that a person’s breath odor, and even body odor changes as a result of blood sugar levels, especially if ketones are even slightly elevated. I also am sure a dog can detect those changes. What is less predictable though is how the dog might react to the odors and the pet owner’s ability to understand the dog’s reaction.

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Of course it is possible.  There was a case on TV a few years back about a cat that saved her owners life doing just such a thing.
There are assisstance dogs who are trained to detect just before an epileptic goes into seizure and similarly prior to panic attacks for those people.  There are so many cases of dogs doing this sort of thing I am surprised you even question it. 

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Absolutely. There is a large body of anecdotal evidence for this in the service dog community. Dogs trained to bring a "case" on command quickly associate (smell of ketones?? - mechanism is unknown) and bring the case when needed, prior to the individual realizing it themselves. There have been multiple reported instances when dogs have awoken their companions from sleep - a very dangerous time for a diabetic - to alert them of their need.
There is an entire community around training "alert" dogs for diabetics, cardiac alert, seizure alert, etc.
(I have not kept up with the literature recently, but I would assume that studies have been or are being conducted around these abilities.)

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The Can-Do-Canines Corporation in Minneapolis, MN currently trains dogs for service to detect a certain scent given off by diabetics when their glucose is dropping; this is especially useful for those diabetics that cannot physically sense when their blood glucose is dropping (neurological deficiency) before checking their blood glucose on a meter.  Once these dogs detect the scent they will basically harrass their client to check their blood glucose, so that hypoglycemic action can be taken before their glucose level gets beyond the point of self-help.  Can-Do-Canines has partnered with a local prison to use inmates to assist in this valuable training with these dogs.  We adopted a golden retriever from this organization as a family pet, but I was amazed to hear about how this training was done by Can-Do-Canines !!

Type I Diabetic and Laboratory Quality Manager in Cedar Rapids, Iowa

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