Research and cooperation

Hundhjälpen i Uppland

Hundhjälpen i Uppland has, together with Uppsala universitet, Region Uppsala and Stock Hundutveckling, started cooperating on a project whose purpose is to research the performance and ability of dogs at diagnostics of covid-19.

The study that is being carried out consists of three parts; collection of samples, training of dogs and finally the validation and evaluation of the dogs.
The evaluation is scheduled to take place at the end of June 2021.

Collection of samples

At sampling sites for PCR test in Uppsala persons are asked to participate in the study by taking an extra sample, a napkin sample, which is stroked on the forehead and neck and then placed in a sample tube.

Dog training

Corona dogs work with these scent samples in specially built selection tracks. All participating dogs have undergone a suitability test especially for this task. Training lasts for about three months and consists of fragrance discrimination. According to studies there is minimal risk of dogs becoming infected and there are no known cases where the dogs developed any symptoms.

Evaluation

Upon dog training completion the performance and ability will be validated and evaluated by researchers at Uppsala University. This will be done through blind tests where neither the trainer nor the dog are aware of the test result.

Dogs have a highly developed sense of smell and previous research has shown promising results for dogs that have been trained for various diagnostic tasks, for example identifying specific bacterial infections, cancer and low / high blood sugar.

“Letting dogs do a first screening can be an effective and fast method that, for example,saves a lot of time and resources by not PCR-testing everyone, but only the people whose scent sample the dog marked.”, says Mats Martinell, medical management manager at the sampling unit at Region Uppsala.

Research leader responsible for the study at Uppsala University is Tove Fall, professor of molecular epidemiology.
Uppsala University 2021-03-03
Information from Uppsala University (in Swedish)

Researcher groups around the world are now investigating whether dogs can be trained to mark scent samples that come from people with covid-19, with several of these studies showing positive results. There are a few Corona dogs in the world. Finnish researchers have developed dogs that detect infection from scent samples. They are now used at airports in Finland.

Corona dogs have also been trained in Germany, Australia, France and the United States. In March, the WHO held an international conference on the subject of Corona Dogs, The Use of Trained Dogs for Screening COVID-19 Cases.

V. Grandjean, D. et al. Detection dogs as a help in the detection of COVID-19 Can the dog alert on COVID-19 positive persons by sniffing axillary sweat samples ? Proof-of-concept study. BioRxiv. 5 June 2020
V. Jendrny, P. et al. Scent dog identification of samples from COVID-19 patients – a pilot study. BMC Infectious Diseases (2020) 20:536