Dogs can be trained, certain diseases like Diabetes, liver inflammation, or even certain forms of cancer to perceive by smell. In Massachusetts, it is now possible to train dogs to detect epileptic seizures.
In a dog training center in Massachusetts, five dogs were trained so that they have a samples among a plurality of Smell, and the same people in different situations, the one found in the case of an epileptic seizure had taken place. Thus, trained dogs are also scent samples of people with epilepsy that were foreign to them, as the researchers in the journal Scientific Reports reports recognized.
Five epileptics were seven odor samples are obtained, one during a seizure and six others in normal situations with various activities, such as sports. Of the five dogs all identified the attack samples correctly, three dogs made any mistakes at all and the two animals were two-thirds of the samples correctly – so, they were still significantly better than a random result.
Although the sample with the five dogs and patients was small, the study showed clearly that epileptic seizures are associated with a characteristic odor that can be detected by dogs. Whether the dogs could also smell an impending attack, it can not be answered with this study.
Earlier reports of "Anfallwarnhunde" show that these epileptics can make a coming attack carefully. In this way, patients gain time to prepare for it and to avoid, for example, falls. So far, it was unclear whether the dogs can detect this through the smell of the patient or whether they perceive the fine characters from the behavior, or the voice of their owner.
ZOU