How dogs could spot your sleeping problems

DOGS may offer a new way to diagnose sleep apnoea, where the throat closes and stops people breathing normally as they sleep.

in a recent study, doctors at Helsinki University Hospital in Finland successfully trained dogs to distinguish patients with sleep apnoea from healthy people based on the smell of their urine, according to the journal Sleep and Breathing.

‘Dogs could be used to identify novel biomarkers or possibly screen for obstructive sleep apnoea,’ the researchers said.

Diagnosis of sleep apnoea usually involves spending a night in a sleep lab, and doctors say a simple screening test would be useful.