Dogs can sniff out low blood sugar

In some people with diabetes, these episodes can occur suddenly with little warning, they said.

The research was published in the journal Diabetes Care.

Dogs don’t so much see the world as they do smell it. Our canine companions can detect the tiniest odour concentrations – around one part per trillion. Diabetes patients are most vulnerable when they sleep, as they can experience hypoglycemia without waking up. They believe that dogs may be sensitive to the presence of isoprene and suggest that it may be possible to develop detectors that can identify elevated levels of isoprene in the breath of patients at risk of hypoglycemia.

This puts them at greater risk of hypos, or low blood sugar, that can cause shakiness, disorientation and fatigue. A chemical is exhaled in human breath during a hypoglycemic episode.

Dogs have lots of adorable skills, but one of the most mysterious is their ability to sniff out medical conditions, such as some types of cancer, and dangerously low blood sugar levels in diabetics. She also has a golden Labrador dog that has been trained by the charity Medical Detection Dogs to detect when her blood sugar levels are falling to potentially risky levels.

Scientists found that lowering the women’s blood sugar – in supervised conditions – was causing the chemical isoprene to raise significantly, sometimes even double the amount.

Using mass spectrometry, scientists from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom studied the breaths of eight women with type 1 diabetes.

A breath test to detect the presence of hypoglycemia could represent an improvement on current finger-prick blood glucose tests, following a scientific breakthrough. This allowed her to test her blood immediately and rectify her sugar levels.

“Magic was just over 18 months when I got him and we’ve been together now for just over two and a half years and in that time he’s alerted over 2,500 times”, says Magic’s owner, type 1 diabetic Claire Pesterfield, in the video.

According to a report in Tech Times by Alyssa Navarro, “Patients with Type 1 Diabetes are often required to have their blood tested multiple times a day to ensure that their sugar levels are not too high or too low”. Potentially, new breath tests could be created from the findings of the research, which could replace regular prick tests that Type 1 diabetes patients are regularly subjected to.

Elsewhere, a German Shepherd called Frankie was previous year trained to sniff out thyroid cancer in urine samples with a success rate of 88 per cent. He was trained at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, and the team hailed Frankie for his “unbelievable” sense of smell. A breathalyzer or something similar that monitors isoprene levels could hypothetically mimic the function of a dog’s nose.

Plus, of course, it’s way cuter.