Photo: Oli Scarff / Getty Images
By: The opinion
Thursday, November 14
Mexico advances in training program for dogs that detect Covid-19
The Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute (Cinvestav), the Obi-K canine training center 19 of Hermosillo, Sonora and the University of Sonora, developed a training program for dogs that could detect patients infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, in some stages of Covid – 19.
To say of Víctor Vidal Martínez, researcher at Cinvestav, Mérida Unit, in southern Mexico, when ill with Covid – 19, humans secrete a peculiar aroma that dogs are able to identify . So far, the training seeks a minimum effectiveness of 80 percent in contagion detections.
The idea came up after identifying which are the volatile organic compounds that are generated when infected with Covid, to later reproduce the pseudo-scents.
“ Pseudo-scents are used in these dog training technologies to search for bombs, people, or drugs.
For this, the project requires taking at least thousand samples of sweat and saliva from healthy and infected people, which is confirmed in real time by PCR tests applied to the participants. Volunteers are given gauze pads to soak up the scent of their armpits and face.
A part of the sweat samples are placed in special containers and are analyzed in the gas chromatograph, a device that heats the sample and detects the ions present; and allows to know what compounds it is, to generate the pseudo aromas; the other half of the samples are used so that the canines can sniff them and the researchers record the percentage of effectiveness regarding detection.
“ Dogs must meet that minimum requirement of 80 percent detection to have a sensitivity level, that is, a detection level high enough to be compared with antigen tests ” explained Dr. Víctor Vidal.
He added that “ If we achieve that level of sensitivity of the dogs by detecting, then they could be comparable with antigen tests and that will help a lot in the different countries where this effort is being carried out to train dogs to detect Covid- 19 , I know are accepted by the health systems. ”
The dog school has 14 dogs, while Cinvestav Mérida is in charge of two dogs participating in the study, which ends in February of next year, but the research team hopes to move on to a next stage to train the canine pairs from various dependencies of the country.
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