“The dog is man’s best friend,” it is often said. Now the dog may be the best friend for diabetics who inject insulin. One of the difficulties with insulin injections is the very unpleasant and sometimes perilous hypoglycemia (very low blood sugar). Now, it seems, dogs may be trained to detect a hypoglycemic episode before it happens.

It is their hyper-sensitive nose. Dogs are well-known for their sense of smell, not only to detect the faintest of odors — traces of odor down to parts per trillion — but to detect and identify particular odors. For years, dogs have been used to track and find people either in need of help or who may be evading police. Their sensitive noses also help detect explosives and other perilous substances, as well as illegal ones such as drugs.

Now dogs are being trained to help detect certain medical conditions. One of the most promising areas of dog-sniffing detection is cancer. The dog’s incredible sense of smell has been found to detect certain cancer cells.

Now there may be dogs to help with diabetes. Recent research into their odor-detecting abilities seems to indicate that a dog can detect a hypoglycemic episode in a diabetic person before the hypoglycemia is noticeable. This research started after diabetic dog-owners related that their dog would whine, lick the owner’s face, etc., before the event occurred.

This could be quite a help and a boon to type 1 diabetics. If their dog were able to detect and indicate a potential low blood-sugar event, the diabetic could test their blood sugar to verify the dog’s behavior (after all, a passing cat might cause a similar reaction). They could have a glucose-raising snack at hand and prevent the drop in blood sugar. They might want to give Fido a snack as well!

Medical science has produced artificial limbs, hearts and lungs. Now efforts are underway to build an artificial nose: a machine to mimic the odor-detecting abilities of a dog. Such a machine is unlikely for some time, as the particles detectable by a dog’s nose are exceedingly tiny. Any electronic nose would have to not only detect the presence of the tiny particle amongst billions of other particles, but identify it as the one it’s looking for. It may be mid-century before an electronic nose is perfected that can detect cancer or hypoglycemia as well as a dog.

Meanwhile type 1 diabetics are left with careful and watchful management and control of diabetes. The fact is, even with a well-trained dog today or a fully-functioning electronic nose in the future, diabetics will always require a excellent system to control their disease.

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