T. Craig Angle

The volatilome is the entire set of volatile organic compounds (VOC) produced by an organism. The accumulation of VOC inside and outside of the body reflect the unique metabolic state of an organism. Scientists are developing technologies to non-invasively detect VOC for the purposes of medical diagnosis, therapeutic monitoring, disease outbreak containment, and disease prevention. Detection dogs are proven to be a valuable real-time mobile detection technology for the detection of VOC related to explosives, narcotics, humans, and many other targets of interests. Little is known about what dogs are detecting when searching for biological targets. It is important to understand where biological VOC originates and how dogs might be able to detect biological targets. This review paper discusses the recent scientific literature involving VOC analysis and postulates potential biological targets for canine detection. Dogs have shown their ability to detect pathogen and disease specific VOC. Future research will determine if dogs can be employed operationally in hospitals, on borders, in underserved areas, on farms, and in other operational environments to give real-time feedback on the presence of a biological target.

Viral infections are ubiquitous in humans, animals, and plants. Real-time methods to identify viral infections are limited and do not exist for use in harsh or resource-constrained environments. Previous research identified that tissues produce unique volatile organic compounds (VOC) and demonstrated that VOC concentrations change during pathologic states including infection, neoplasia, or metabolic disease. Patterns of VOC expression may be pathogen-specific and may be associated with an odor that could be used for disease detection. We investigated the ability of two trained dogs to detect cell cultures infected with bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV) and to discriminate BVDV-infected cell cultures from uninfected cell cultures and from cell cultures infected with bovine herpes virus 1 (BHV 1) and bovine parainfluenza virus 3 (BPIV 3). Dogs were trained to recognize cell cultures infected with two different biotypes of BVDV propagated in MDBK cells using one of three culture media. For detection trials, one target and seven distractors were presented on a scent wheel by a dog handler unaware of the location of targets and distractors. Detection of BVDV- infected cell cultures by Dog 1 had a diagnostic sensitivity of 0.850 (95% CI: 0.701 - 0.942), which was lower than Dog 2 (0.967, 95% CI: 0.837 - 0.994). Both dogs exhibited very high diagnostic specificity (0.981, 95% CI: 0.960 - 0.993) and (0.993, 95% CI: 0.975 - 0.999), respectively. These findings demonstrate that trained dogs can differentiate between cultured cells infected with BVDV, BHV1, and BPIV3 and are a realistic real-time mobile pathogen sensing technology for viral pathogens. The ability to discriminate between target and distractor samples plausibly results from expression of unique VOC patterns virus-infected and uninfected cells.

Background  Sprinting, jumping, stopping, turning and movement initiation produce the highest forces and largest ranges of motion in the canine gait, yet very little is known about them.Objective  The purpose of this study was to develop a general kinematic sequencing of maximal movement initiation of Greyhounds using joint angles and a segmental diagram.Design  Seven Greyhounds conducted maximal movement initiation trials on a vegetated surface by chasing a lure. A high‐speed kinematic analysis was conducted to evaluate joint angles (cervical, shoulder, elbow, carpus, hip, stifle and tarsus).Results  A sequence of the movement was developed and included a kinematic description at seven events: (1) standing, (2) set position, (3) front paw touch down, (4) rear paw take‐off, (5) front paw take‐off, (6) rear paw touchdown and (7) second front paw touchdown. In addition, canine segmental figures were generated for each of the seven events for a visual reference of segmental alignment.Conclusions  Sequencing provides an understanding of movement initiation in Greyhounds. The kinematic data helps fill the void in the scientific literature with regard to movement initiation in a naturalistic environment.Clinical relevance  These values will help the veterinary community understand the kinematics of maximal movement initiation so that training, conditioning, diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation can be precisely directed to achieve the goal of optimal performance and properly returning dogs to athletic, recreational or working activities.