This is a small trial only using eight
dogs and is presented before being published in a peer-reviewed
journal. There are several possible biases that are self-evident
causing this to be junk science. Either the article was poorly
written by an author not understanding the subject, or the authors of
the study presented this in a poor manner,
The first statement that I question is
this - “the first sign of hypoglycemia was the continuous glucose
monitoring, followed by the dog, followed by a patient's symptoms.”
This is the first controlled study of
the reliability of diabetes alert dogs to hypoglycemia in their
diabetic companions under real-life conditions, Los said. Evan Los,
MD, of Oregon Health & Science University in Portland is the lead
author. His group examined eight patients (the youngest was
4-years-old) who had both a diabetes alert dog and a blinded CGM.
Dog alerts were recorded in a diary and those were compared to
capillary blood glucose (CBG) and CGM downloads.
Diabetes alert dogs undergo rigorous
training, starting with obedience and socialization, as well as scent
training. For the latter, they are trained based on a cotton swab of
sweat from a human companion during a hypoglycemic event. The
training takes 6-24 months to complete, but there is no universal
competence test for dogs.
The first bias is using a 4-year-old
child that can do little or no continuous training to the dog. A
child this young generally indicates that the parents may have
abdicated their responsibility of caring for their child. This is
common and occurs more often than it should.
The second bias is the length of
training. Six months means the dog is generally unfit for duty as a
diabetes service dog. Most excellent trainers would prefer the 24
months or up to 30 months for the dog to be trained and the owner of
the service dog to be trained on how to continue the training to
reinforce prior training.
While there is no universal competence
test for hypoglycemia alert training, there is a test given by the
American Kennel Club for a dog to become a good citizen when out in
the public and every diabetes service dog needs to have this training
and pass this test.
I can concede that there will be some
false positives with any dog, but the level in this study does require that the
study needs to be redone with properly trained dogs and not include
children that have no knowledge in refresher training to prevent the
large number of false positives.
Only using eight dogs of unknown
training is a serious weakness of this controlled study and makes me
doubt that the proper criteria were established before the trial
began. No information is given about the original trainers, which
can also affect the outcome of the study as some trainers can talk
the talk, but not walk the walk.
Study limitations included the small
sample size, short duration of the study, and the fact that the dogs
were different breeds and different ages, and from different
trainers. The most reliable dog in the sample had completed 24 months
of dog training, suggesting that dog skills diminish over time and
may require re-training.
The last sentence above shows the
ignorance of the person making this statement, as the owner of the
diabetes service dog also needs to be trained in how to refresh the
dog's training on a continuous basis. Dogs do get lazy and suffer from poor use.
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