These pets can determine disease with an accuracy of 70 percent.. It's enough for them to sniff the socks of the patient..

In 2016, there were 216 million cases of malaria and about 445 thousand deaths in the world.. 90 percent of them were in tropical Africa. The causative agents of the disease were, as a rule, five types of malarial plasmodia, which are carried by several species of mosquitoes from person to person.. This is reported by the magazine N + 1.

Now malaria is most often diagnosed microscopically, determining the presence of plasmodia in blood smears.. However, not everywhere there is the necessary equipment for diagnostics..

British doctors decided to test whether it is possible to train dogs to distinguish between sick and healthy people by smell. Schoolchildren from the Gambia aged 5 to 14 years old participated in the experiment.. They were diagnosed with the presence or absence of malaria, and the infected children were checked for the presence or absence of symptoms of the disease..

Then 145 healthy and 30 infected children, in whom the disease was asymptomatic, were asked to wear socks for the night.. Sniffing dogs were used for testing.. Dogs correctly detected the smells of sick children in 70 percent of cases, and the smell of healthy children - in 90 percent of cases..

Scientists were pleased with the results.. In their opinion, dogs can perfectly detect malaria.. If they are given a sniff of an infected person or his clothes, the level of accuracy in determining the disease will be very high..

yellmed. ru.

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