Rats help save humans.
Long before CAT scans, X-rays, blood samples and colonoscopies, physicians used the good sense they were born with: their sense of smell. That’s because bacterias, cancers and infections create unique smells. Sweet, fruity breath could mean diabetes. A foul-smelling wound might spell an infection. Liver disease? Fishy-smelling breath. Kidney disease makes a mouth smell like urine. Tuberculosis smells like tar. (In ancient Greece and China, if you were suspected to have tuberculosis, doctors would burn your spit with a stone or hot flame and interpret the fume’s odor.)
Recently, another powerful little nose has joined the diagnostic force: that of the African giant pouched rat. The sizeable rodents are helping to detect tuberculosis (TB).
Read more about these amazing rats and the work they are doing by visiting the full article here.
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