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BY CHELSEA MCGARTLAND

ANCHOR JJ BAILEY

You're watching multisource health video news analysis from Newsy. 

Dogs can detect early stages of lung cancer just by smelling your breath.

That’s according to some new research-- Web MD reports...

“The new study, which is published in the European Respiratory Journal, found that four trained dogs -- two German shepherds, an Australian shepherd, and a Labrador retriever -- correctly identified cancer in 71 of 100 samples from lung cancer patients.”

Despite the success rate of the doggie detectors a blogger for news commentary site, Fark.com, isn’t impressed.

“Studies show that dogs can sniff out lung cancer. Big whoop dogs, I can smell smokers too”

But researchers were one step ahead--

They made sure their study included positive and negative samples from smokers and non-smokers to eliminate the chance that a dog was just picking up on a tobacco scent.

WMAR spoke with an oncologist whose patient was saved when her dog detected her breast cancer.

CHARLEY CROWSON: Do you believe that her dog saved her life?

DOCTOR: I absolutely believe that the dog saved Ms. Whicher’s life

CHARLEY CROWSON: The doctor firmly believes this because cancer causes the body to release chemicals in our sweat, urine and in our breath. Hundreds of them that dogs can smell, but people simple can’t. The doctor and her team are now working on a test that could detect cancer from a simple deep breath.

MedPageToday says the biggest thing to come out of this study actually has nothing to do with dogs, but rather with what exactly they’re smelling.

“... the findings were most important for confirming that human exhalations contain markers for lung cancer, which eventually may be detectable by more conventional means.”

Lung cancer is a top killer because it usually isn’t found until it is in an advanced stage. Scientists are already working with exhaled breath specimens to develop a future test. The Daily Mail explains just what they’re looking for.

“These [tests] attempt to locate volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the breath that are linked to the presence of cancer, but no reliable methods have been devised so far that are lung-specific.”

Transcript by Newsy.