Dogs are known as best friends of human beings and now they have been claimed to have the ability to detect prostate cancer in men. Italian researchers have reported that dogs can be trained to sniff out evidence of prostate cancer in human urine with organic chemicals released into urine by prostate cancers with 98% accuracy rate.

The findings of the study are set to be discussed on Sunday during the annual meeting of the American Urological Association in Orlando, Florida.

Dr. Gianluigi Taverna, a researcher with Humanitas Research Hospital in Milan, said, "With our study, we have demonstrated that the use of dogs might represent in the future a real clinical opportunity if used together with common diagnostic tools".

The researchers used urine samples from 677 people including 320 prostate cancer patients and 357 healthy individuals. The dogs were trained to detect volatile organic compounds that are produced by prostate cancer tumors. The chemicals easily evaporate into the air and produce a scent that can be detected by the highly sensitive canine nose.

The researchers associated a reward with the dogs' ability to catch the scent of a cancer-infected sample and sitting in front of it. Taverna said that the team worked five days a week to train the dogs. One dog accurately detected the presence of prostate cancer 98.9% of the time, while the second registered accuracy of 97.3%.

Taverna said the results of their study are really exciting and proved that dogs can be a valuable asset in diagnosing prostate cancer. The detection method has many advantages over existing ones as it is reproducible, low cost and non-invasive for the patients. Also, using dogs for detecting prostate cancer also reduces unnecessary prostate biopsies and pinpoint patients at high risk for prostate cancer.