A Labrador retriever in Japan can sniff out colorectal cancers with the same accuracy as a colonoscopy.

A nine year-old Labrador retriever named Marine can sniff out colorectal cancer in patients with 90 percent accuracy.   The dog is trained to smell breath and other biological samples.

The experiment was conducted over a period from November 2008 to June 2009.  About 300 patients were sampled.

The experiment was conducted at the St. Sugar Cancer Sniffing Dog Training Center in Minamiboso, Chiba Prefecture, Japan. The researchers at the center were joined by Hideto Sonoda, assistant professor at the Department of Surgery and Science, Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Kyushu University, in Fukuoka, Japan.

The results of the study were published Monday in the British Medical Journal Gut.

Marine correctly picked out the breath-sample container from a group of five containers 33 out of 36  times.  In another test that used liquid from feces she was able to identify the correct container 37 out of 38 times.

The dog was not fooled by samples taken from smokers or from patients with other types of bowel problems including polyps, inflammatory bowel disease, ulcers, diverticulitis or appendicitis.

Marine did especially well with patients in early stages of disease.  Overall, she preformed as well as a colonoscopy.

The director of the center, Yuji Sato, said Marine was trained to recognize the odor of ingested food on the breath of patients.

In other tests the dog was successful in sniffing out cancers of the breast, lung, prostate, uterine, ovarian, bladder, gastric, pancreatic and esophageal cancers from breath samples, along with hepatocellular carcinoma and cholangiocarcinoma.

“She presumably reacted to a smell unique to cancers,” Sonoda said. “If we can identify the material causing the smell, it may also lead to early cancer detection,” he said.

The Japanese study is only the latest in an on-going attempt to use dogs to detect cancer.  Please watch the video to see a California experiment.

(Unlike other, lower class publications, Aquapour will refrain from descending into puns like “New Lab Test For Cancer” Ed)