According to a research report published in European Respiratory Journal, Sniffer Dogs can "reliably" detect Lung cancer by merely sniffing a patient's breath.

The study found that the dogs correctly detected 71 percent people with the disease and dismissed 93 percent people without the disease.

How did that happen?

Scientists at Schillerhoehe Hospital in Germany believe that dogs, long used by police to sniff out drugs, are able to use their sensitive noses to detect chemicals known as volatile organic compounds that are present in cancer sufferers and exhaled in their breath, a report in Telegraph said.

"In the breath of patients with lung cancer, there are likely to be different chemicals to normal breath samples and the dogs' keen sense of smell can detect this difference at an early stage of the disease. Our results confirm the presence of a stable marker for lung cancer," the report quoted the scientists as saying.

"This is a big step forward in the diagnosis of lung cancer, but we still need to precisely identify the compounds observed in the exhaled breath of patients. It is unfortunate that dogs cannot communicate the biochemistry of the scent of cancer!" Thorsten Walles, the author of the study said, according to the report.

Germany Cancer Medicine Germany