Beagles stopping Diarrhea Death

It’s not unusual to see beagles in airports, sniffing suitcases for potential explosives. But hospitals?

Yes hospital beagle’s are detecting the presence of Clostridium Difficile!

At two Dutch hospitals, yes. After two months of training, a beagle detected the presence of Clostridium difficile, a bacteria that can cause severe diarrhea and colitis in 25 out of 30 patients. The dog also correctly identified 265 out of 270 people who were not sick in the study published in BMJ.

An increasing number of patients die from C. difficile in the United States — about 14,000 each year, usually in hospital or long-term care settings, according to Time Magazine. Most the patients are frail or immune-suppressed.