BERKELEY, CA (UroToday.com) - The idea of early detection using urine samples for urological malignancy is extremely attractive. There seems little doubt that urinary composition can be altered in these diseases, and we established this study to determine whether olfaction might be a suitable approach to early detection.
It took us a long while to get the results of this study published. We believe that this is mainly because the results were not ‘positive’ in the sense that they did not show that the dogs we trained could reliably detect the odour of prostate cancer. Nevertheless, our study is extremely important in improving the methods used to test canine olfactory detection of cancer, especially with regard to reduction of bias.
Although the results of our study did not prove that dogs can diagnose malignant prostate cancer from human urine, we emphasise that other studies have shown promising results using dogs to detect other cancers and diseases. This remains an exciting and promising new area of diagnostic research and canine detection of prostate cancer may be possible if studies are optimised to achieve this. We hope that the lessons learned from our study will assist future researchers in this area to use well-controlled studies and avoid some of the unexpected confounding factors we encountered.
We suspect that publication bias is rife in this field, so we were particularly pleased to have BMC Urology accept our article in the interests of scientific endeavour and to promote a balanced view of the evidence in this field. We would strongly encourage authors of other studies relating to olfactory detection of disease, whether positive or negative, to strive to publish their data too.
Written by:
Hywel Williams, David Neal, Kevin Elliker, Barbara Somerville, Sarah Armstrong and Donald Broom as part of Beyond the Abstract on UroToday.com. This initiative offers a method of publishing for the professional urology community. Authors are given an opportunity to expand on the circumstances, limitations etc... of their research by referencing the published abstract.
Professor of Dermato-Epidemiology and Director of the Centre of Evidence-Based Dermatology
University of Nottingham
C Floor, South Block, Queen’s Medical Centre
Nottingham University Hopsitals NHS Trust
Nottingham NG7 2UH, UK
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