Japan to use cancer-sniffing dogs to help early detection

Get the Full StoryA town in Japan with high rates of stomach cancer is turning to a sniffer dogs for help.

Kaneyama, a town in northeastern Japan with 6,000 residents, has Japan's highest fatality rates stemming from stomach cancer, local reports say.

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The town is now taking part in a research programme, in which residents' frozen urine samples are sent to the Nippon Medical School, just east of Tokyo. At the school, dogs are trained to sniff out signs of disease.

Dogs have some 300 million sensors in their nose, compared to five million in a human. They also have a second smelling device in the back of their noses, the combination of which allows trained dogs to detect cancerous tumours — which is said to give out a specific odour. Read more...More about Health, Dogs, Japan, Cancer, and World

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