Study reveals dogs can smell, detect epileptic seizures

A small study has found that humans emit a distinct odor during epileptic seizures, and that some dogs can be trained to recognize the smell.

In a new paper published in Scientific Reports this week, researchers show that trained service dogs could correctly identify seizure odors anywhere from 67 to 100 percent of the time.

Some dogs had a 100 percent accuracy rate during the scent test, however, even lower-performing dogs could identify seizure odors at a rate that was better than random chance.

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The researchers say their study is the first to show that seizures do cause a detectable change in human body odor — and that dogs can be trained to use their powerful sense of smell to recognize it.

The finding gives researchers and the 65 million people worldwide living with epilepsy new hope for the efficacy of seizure alert dogs.

Many people who experience seizures anecdotally report that service dogs do help them manage some aspects of their condition.

But until now, there has been little scientific evidence to support dogs’ abilities to detect seizures.

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