Dogs trained to detect malaria victims could be posted at UK ports
centre in Milton Keynes. In total 175 socks worn overnight by children in The Gambia in Africa were used in the training, including 30 malaria-positive children and 145 from those not infected.
Dr Claire Guest, study co-author and the centre’s chief executive officer, said: “It’s like a scent game. When you find the right odour you get rewarded. If you correctly say the odour isn’t there you also get rewarded.
“It takes between four to six months, depending on how difficult it is to present the disease and how long it takes to detect the samples.”
The centre has been training dogs to detect diseases, including prostate cancer and breast cancer, for more than 10 years. Dr Guest said malaria was significantly easier for the dogs to detect than other conditions.
“For some diseases the changes in the body are very subtle, particularly early on,” she said. “But it appears that once the malaria parasite is in someone’s body it causes quite a big change that the dogs are able to detect quite easily, so it’s very exciting.”
Malaria is a life-threatening disease caused by parasites transmitted to people through the bites of infected female Anopheles mosquitoes.
In 2016 there were about 216 million cases of malaria in 91 countries, according to the World Health Organisation.