VOA健康报道2024--Can Bees, Dogs Identify Cancer Earlier Than Machines?

Researchers at Michigan State University recently found that bees' sense of "smell" is sensitive enough to identify chemical smells of cancer.

Bees sense chemicals in their environment using antennae¹, structures on their heads, which serve as "noses" to sense smells.

The researchers wrote in a study published last month that honeybees can sniff² out lung cancer on a patient's breath.

Debajit Saha is an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Michigan State University. He was part of a team that published the research.

"Our world is visual. [The] insects' world is all based on smell, so their sense of smell is very, very good," Saha said.

"There is quite a bit of research that shows that when some cancer grows inside our body, our breath actually changes. Our research does show that honeybees can detect lung cancer and possibly other diseases based on the smell of those cells."

Saha and his team placed bees in small harnesses and attached small wires to their brains. The insects were then placed near chemicals that are like the breath of a person with lung cancer.

The scientists said that the bees could tell the difference between the cancer breath and the laboratory copy of the healthy human breath 93 percent of the time. The scientists added that the bees could also tell the difference between different kinds of lung cancer.

The discovery could help doctors detect many cancers, including lung, breast, head and neck, and colorectal cancers, earlier than other methods. Saha says detecting cancers this way would be an improvement. "The reason is, many times we detect the cancer late," when a growth has become too big to control easily. But, he added, when cancer starts growing the breath starts changing much earlier.

He hopes to develop a system that a patient will be able to breathe into and which can be carried around easily. This would deliver test results immediately.

"Hopefully, within the next five years, we'll have something to show that humans can be diagnosed using these insect brain disc sensors," Saha said.

Dogs can also help find cancer

Using animals to detect cancer is not a new idea. At the Penn Vet³ Working Dog Center at the University of Pennsylvania, researchers are training dogs to smell some kinds of cancer.

Cindy Otto is executive director of the Penn Vet Working Dog Center in Philadelphia. She said many other animals also have very good senses of smell. "But part of what makes dogs so good is that they cooperate with humans, and so, they communicate that information," she added.

The dogs are in a program where they live with families and are brought to "work" each day. Not all dogs can do this work. Otto said,

"They need to love it to be engaged. And so, it's a really fun game for them."

Some researchers say that dogs detect cancer better than machines. They note that a dog's sense of smell is 10,000 to 100,000 times sharper than that of humans.

Amritha Mallikarjun is another postdoctoral researcher at the center. She said dogs are more sensitive to smells than any machines sold today. But the scientists hope to create a machine that will identify disease just as well as dogs.

Otto said doctors in ancient Greece and Rome used odor as a tool to identify disease. She hopes the researchers can build on that "and advance the health of not only humans, but dogs and other species as well."

Words in This Story

sniff out - phrasal verb. detect by smell

visual - adj. related to the sense of sight

detect - v. to discover or notice the presence of (something that is hidden or hard to see, hear, taste, or sense)

harness - n. a set of straps⁴ that are placed on an animal

diagnose - v. to recognize (a disease, illness, or the like) by examining someone

engage - v. to be involved in something

advance - v. to move forward or to make progress

1 antennae   

n.天线；触角

参考例句：

• Sometimes a creature uses a pair of antennae to swim.有时某些动物使用其一对触须来游泳。
• Cuba's government said that Cubans found watching American television on clandestine antennae would face three years in jail.古巴政府说那些用秘密天线收看美国电视的古巴人将面临三年监禁。

2 sniff   

vi.嗅…味道；抽鼻涕；对嗤之以鼻，蔑视

参考例句：

• The police used dogs to sniff out the criminals in their hiding - place.警察使用警犬查出了罪犯的藏身地点。
• When Munchie meets a dog on the beach, they sniff each other for a while.当麦奇在海滩上碰到另一条狗的时候，他们会彼此嗅一会儿。

3 vet   

n.兽医，退役军人；vt.检查

参考例句：

• I took my dog to the vet.我把狗带到兽医诊所看病。
• Someone should vet this report before it goes out.这篇报道发表之前应该有人对它进行详查。

4 straps   

n.带子( strap的名词复数 )；挎带；肩带；背带v.用皮带捆扎( strap的第三人称单数 )；用皮带抽打；包扎；给…打绷带

参考例句：

• the shoulder straps of her dress 她连衣裙上的肩带
• The straps can be adjusted to suit the wearer. 这些背带可进行调整以适合使用者。