The current critique focuses on the article “Can the Detection Dog Alert on COVID-19 Positive Persons by Sniffing Axillary Sweat Samples? A Proof-of-Concept Study” by Grandjean et al.
The article under review is an experiment to determine whether trained dogs can identify COVID-19 positive individuals by their sweat samples. A high burden of the pandemic demonstrates that quick and reliable testing is a crucial measure to control the spread of disease. Grandjean et al. relied on trained dogs because a few previous studies determined the effectiveness of this approach in identifying people with infections, parasite diseases, and cancer.
The study recruited COVID-19 positive and negative individuals from four hospitals in Paris, France and one such establishment in Beirut, Lebanon. In total, 177 people were recruited, and one underarm sweat sample was obtained from each of them. Before the experiment, 14 dogs were trained from one to three weeks, but only six dogs participated in testing. The authors followed all the required ethical standards while working with animals. According to the researchers, the dogs correctly determined COVID-19 positive samples with 70%-to-100% success rates. This finding demonstrates that trained dogs can be a primary tool in COVID-19 testing, but a further double-blind validation study is necessary to justify the results.
This information allows for concluding that the article under review is a high-quality study. Firstly, it has all the components required for a peer-review scientific work, including an introduction with literature review, methods, results, and discussion. Secondly, Grandjean et al. explained in detail their methodology so that it is easy to replicate the research. Thirdly, the authors used appropriate statistical tests to arrive at results and comment on them. The authors also introduced the limitations and strengths of their study. Consequently, sufficient evidence demonstrates that this peer-review article is of high quality.
Work Cited
Grandjean, Dominique, et al. “Can the Detection Dog Alert on COVID-19 Positive Persons by Sniffing Axillary Sweat Samples? A Proof-of-Concept Study.” PLoS ONE, vol. 15, no. 12, 2020, p. e0243122.