An Idiographic Investigation of Diabetic Alert Dogs' Ability to Learn From a Small Sample of Breath Samples From People With Type 1 Diabetes

Abstract

Dogs are trained to detect an odour signalling hypoglycemia in people with type 1 diabetes. No research has addressed the generalizability of this odour training in dogs. One dog could transfer the odour of hypoglycemia across multiple breath samples from 1 person.

Dog Owners’ Survey reveals Medical Alert Dogs can alert to multiple conditions and multiple people

“…Analytical chemistry has revealed that specific patterns of VOCs have the potential to serve as odour biomarkers for metabolic conditions and disease states [24], including, but not limited to, cancers [25], diabetic hyper- [24] and hypoglycaemia [26], asthma [27], and epileptic seizures [28]. Empirical studies with olfactory detection dogs support these findings; dogs have been shown to detect odours associated with many of the same conditions including, cancers [29], epileptic seizures [30], and hypo-and hyperglycaemia [31,32].…”

“…In the context of the current study, a liberal MAD would be more likely to generalise their alert response to odours that are not exact to those to which it had previously been reinforced, therefore being more likely to alert to multiple conditions and/or multiple people. Empirical tests in controlled laboratory settings have allowed researchers to measure the parameters of Signal Detection Theory and have highlighted individual differences in dogs' sensory perceptual abilities and decision criteria during human odour detection tasks [32,61]. Although a dog may have a natural inclination to be a conservative or liberal decision maker, their decision-making bias can be manipulated through training and reinforcement.…”

COVID Sniffer Dogs: Technical and Ethical Concerns

“…Dogs are currently used as special sensors to detect VOCs ( 10 ). They have been successfully trained to detect several metabolic conditions and diseases in humans, including hypoglycemia and hyperglycemia ( 11 , 12 ), epileptic seizures ( 13 ), cancers ( 14 ), and bacterial and viral infections ( 15 ). However, despite the undoubted individual abilities of trained animals, we are still far from a detailed understanding of what exactly the dog responds to and the possibility of generalizing certain abilities to all dogs.…”

The Promise of Disease Detection Dogs in Pandemic Response: Lessons Learned From COVID-19

“…Dogs can detect VOC signatures through their sense of smell of different biological fluids such as urine 16 , saliva 17 , sweat 18 and breath samples 5 . One study in type 1 diabetes showed that the dogs when trained on limited samples did not respond to hypoglycemia in new samples on which they were not trained 19 . Although the sensory capability of dogs is well known, the training of the dogs to identify an odor that is specific to the disease of interest, but still generalize the odor across a wide variety of individuals is a challenge 20 .…”