Use dogs to detect ... malaria in the future

Not only do drugs look, support people in crime prevention tasks, a new study shows that dogs with 'super sensitive' olfactory can detect malaria parasites by . sniffing.

Dogs have at least 220 million olfactory receptors while humans have only 5 million olfactory receptors. Thanks to this heavenly characteristic, dogs have a very good sense of smell.

UK-trained dogs have the ability to detect malaria carriers.

Taking advantage of this feature, scientists have used a type of nylon socks to collect the sweat pattern of healthy children from the age of 14 to 14 in the Gambia, a country in West Africa, to test the ability of some dogs.

Training dogs have the ability to detect people carrying malaria.

Previously, researchers had to inject blood on their fingers to see if they had malaria parasites in their blood.

The collected samples were sent to Medical Detection Dogs in the United Kingdom, where dogs were trained to sniff the difference in scents between infected and uninfected children.

The results were unexpected, in a total of 175 samples tested, 30 samples were 70% positive compared to the blood test results of the researchers identified and 145 children were not infected.

With this result, researchers hope to be able to use trained dogs as a method of screening malaria at airports and other entry ports to prevent dispersal.

According to the World Health Organization, there are currently about 216 million cases and 445,000 malaria deaths worldwide in 2016. It is a potentially lethal disease caused by transmission of the malaria parasite. people through the bite of the Anopheles mosquito.

"It is worrisome that our studies to control malaria have stalled in recent years. We need new tools to help fight malaria," said James Logan, dean. Disease control at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), anxiously said.

Currently, although research is at an early stage, scientists still hope it is positive in the application in the future.