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Lori Murdock
BIOL 1615
6 November 2014
Final Summary
I chose an article from the Journal of Clinical Microbiology which talked about a study
that was done to see if trained African pouched rats could detect tuberculosis. Tuberculosis (also
known as TB) is a disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, a bacteria that spreads
through the bloodstream and through lymph nodes to organs, usually attacking the lungs. This
infection is contagious, but its hard to catch because tuberculosis is usually in an inactive state
in the body. Some people dont show any symptoms of having TB because it is in this latent
state. Tuberculosis can become active with a weakened immune system and can lead to death if
it doesnt get treated.
There are quite a few processes to detect tuberculosis, but there are problems with each of
them. Some of the methods falsely detect tuberculosis, making it so there is no guarantee of
receiving correct results. The other problem with a few of the procedures is that the equipment is
too expensive for poorer countries. Finally, a third problematic factor is the extensive amount of
time it takes for some of the tests to produce results.
In this particular study, smear microscopy and culturing were the main methods used to
test the sputum samples before the samples were given to the rats to test. Smear microscopy is
when a slide with a sputum sample is prepared and given a stain. It is then observed under a
microscope to see if there are signs of Mycobacterium. This method is simple, inexpensive, and
fast (receiving results after only an hour), but has low sensitivity making the results sometimes
inaccurate. The other method used was culturing. Culturing is when bacteria are grown in a

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nutrient rich media to be studied. Culturing and identification of M. tuberculosis provides a
definitive diagnosis of TB and can significantly increase the number of cases found. Culture can
also provide drug susceptibility testing, showing which TB drugs a person's bacteria is resistant
to (TB tests: Skin test, sputum & other types of TB test). Although those are great benefits, this
method is really slow and requires specialized laboratory conditions not available in resourceconstrained settings (Mgode, Weetjens and Nawrath).
Scientists decided to research and experiment how to make the process of diagnosing
tuberculosis faster, simpler, and more reliable. The scientists in this article predicted that rats
would be more effective in detecting Mycobacterium tuberculosis than the methods currently
used. Rats were chosen because they have a good sense of smell, which allows them to be
trained to sense the specific odor tuberculosis gives off in sputum (a mixture of saliva and
mucus) samples. These trained rats possess profound potential for rapid detection of TB with
higher sensitivity and specificity (Mgode, Weetjens and Nawrath). They can detect smearnegative sputa which is often missed by microscopy (one of the methods of TB detection, as
mentioned above). When rats were used as a second-line screening tool, the TB detection rate
increased.
The experiment was done by collecting 289 sputa samples from people at TB clinics.
The people participating in the experiment ranged from less than one to eighty-six years old.
About half were male and half were female. Sniffer rats were used in the process of TB
detection for these samples. The scientists tested the samples ahead of time with smearmicroscopy or culturing so they could use confirmed TB and non-TB samples to determine the
accuracy of the rats detections. If they werent positive the person had tuberculosis or not, they
did not include them in the test.

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The rats were trained by being rewarded with food for pausing to sniff a TB-positive
sputum for at least five seconds. If rats paused at TB-negative samples, they werent rewarded.
On average, it took a rat eight minutes to analyze seventy samples of sputa per session.
For the experiment, they had each rat analyze the sputa two times and each rat participated in
two sessions. It took a total of thirty-two minutes to obtain the results.
In conclusion, there is a great need for rapid, specific, and sensitive diagnosis of TB
(Mgode, Weetjens and Nawrath). Conditioned rats have the potential of providing a way to
accomplish these very needs. If we use rats for early tuberculosis detection, we have the
possibility of controlling TB before it gets transmitted to others. With more research and
experiments, rats could dramatically improve the diagnostic process of tuberculosis.

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Works Cited
Karriem-Norwood, Varnada. "Understanding Tuberculosis -- the Basics." 12 March 2014. WebMD. 6
November 2014. <http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/understanding-tuberculosis-basics>.
Mgode, Georgies F., et al. "Diagnosis of Tuberculosis by Trained African Giant Pouched Rats and
Confounding Impact of Pathogens and Microflora of the Respiratory Tract." Journal of Clinical
Microbiology (2011): 274-280. Document. 11 September 2014.
"TB tests: Skin test, sputum & other types of TB test." n.d. TB Facts.org. 6 November 2014.
<http://www.tbfacts.org/tb-tests.html#header>.