Abstract
Epilepsy is a debilitating and potentially life‐threatening neurological condition which
affects approximately 65 million people worldwide. There is currently no reliable and simple early
warning seizure‐onset device available, which means many people with unstable epilepsy live in
fear of injury or sudden death and the negative impact of social stigmatization. If anecdotal claims
that untrained dogs anticipate seizures are found to be true, they could offer a simple and readily
available early warning system. We hypothesized that, given the extraordinary olfactory ability of
dogs, a volatile organic compound exhaled by the dog’s epileptic owner may constitute an early
warning trigger mechanism to which make dogs react by owner‐directed affiliative responses in the
pre‐seizure period. Using 19 pet dogs with no experience of epilepsy, we exposed them to odours
that were deemed to be characteristic of three seizure phases, by using sweat harvested from people
with epilepsy. The odours were delivered to a point immediately under a non‐epileptic and seated
pet dog owner’s thighs. By altering the alternating odours emerging from sweat samples, captured
before seizure, during a seizure and after a seizure, and two nonseizure controls, we were able to
record the response of the 19 pet dogs. Our findings suggest that seizures are associated with an
odour and that dogs detect this odour and demonstrate a marked increase in affiliative behaviour
directed at their owners. A characteristic response of all 19 dogs to seizure odour presentation was
an intense stare which was statistically significant, (p < 0.0029), across the pre‐seizure, seizure and
post‐seizure phases when compared to control odours of nonseizure origin.
Original language | English |
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Journal | Animals |
Volume | 11 |
Issue number | 8 |
Early online date | 31 Jul 2021 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 31 Jul 2021 |
Keywords
- early warning
- epilepsy
- olfaction
- remote odour delivery mechanism
- seizures
- trigger mechanism
- untrained seizure alert dogs
- volatile organic compounds
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Dive into the research topics of 'The Untrained Response of Pet Dogs to Human Epileptic Seizures'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Student Theses
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The innate ability of pet dogs to spontaneously anticipate epileptic seizures
Author: Powell, N., Dec 2020Supervisor: Ruffell, A. (Supervisor) & Arnott, G. (Supervisor)
Student thesis: Doctoral Thesis › Doctor of Philosophy