Four- legged glucose meters
The effectiveness of dogs capable of sniffing out blood sugar spikes in a diabetic owner was brought to 81%
Which is almost twice as good as what was achieved in previous studies
Evgenia Shcherbina, "The Attic"
Scientists from the University of Bristol found out that specially trained dogs are able to notify their owners with diabetes that their blood sugar levels have excessively dropped or risen, with fairly high accuracy: their average sensitivity to relevant events was 70%, and in 81% of cases they correctly identified and "reported" hypo- or a hyperglycemic crisis in the host. This is much higher than previous studies have shown.
Spikes in blood sugar in diabetes are dangerous because they can lead to loss of consciousness, coma and even death. Dogs can naturally smell such changes in the human body and notify their owners about it. It is believed that dogs trained to alert a person about hypo- or hyperglycemia, that is, a decrease or increase in blood sugar, significantly improve the quality of life of patients with type I diabetes. But there are few studies on this issue, they were conducted on samples of only a few animals, and the results were contradictory.
More dogs participated in this study than in the previous ones, although also not very many: 27 retrievers, poodles and cocker spaniels, specially trained to notify their owners that their blood sugar has dropped. First, they were allowed to sniff the breath and sweat of a person who had a hypoglycemic episode for seven weeks, after which they were rewarded with a treat. Having smelled hypoglycemia in the owner, the dog had to lick his hands or bring a set to measure blood sugar levels. Then the training continued for 6-12 weeks with the direct owners of the dogs. People with diabetes were required to make records of all their blood sugar spikes and the behavior of the dog at each of them. In total, during the observations, the study participants recorded 4197 similar events.
On average, dogs showed the necessary sensitivity to sugar spikes in 70% of cases. At the same time, although they were trained to notify only about hypoglycemia, many dogs also reacted to hyperglycemia – an increase in sugar. As a result, dogs were sensitive to hypoglycemic cases in 83% of cases, to hyperglycemic cases – in 67%. The average predictive ability of dogs was at the level of 81%. This means that in 81% of cases when they notified their owners, they actually had an increase or decrease in sugar. Four dogs predicted such episodes 100% of the time.
According to experts, the ability of dogs to notify owners about episodes of diabetes is still quite individual and depends on many factors. It matters the duration of training, the age of the owner (in children, dogs sense glycemia on average worse), the fact whether the dog was a pet of this owner before training (in this case, the accuracy of alerts increases), etc.
Nevertheless, the researchers write, dogs in this experiment demonstrated much greater efficiency than in the previous study – then the sensitivity of dogs was only 36%, and the accuracy was 12%. In addition, it was carried out on a smaller number of animals.
In general, the authors of the article consider the use of medical dogs justified and desirable. Trained pets will allow their owners with diabetes to avoid extreme situations with blood sugar spikes and improve the quality of life.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru