MOROGORO, Tanzania, Dec. 16 (UPI) -- Giant African rats, already used to sniff out land mines, are being trained to sniff out tuberculosis in humans, the New Scientist reported.
Preliminary tests suggest the rats could test as many as 150 saliva samples for TB in just 30 minutes compared to 20 samples tested by human technicians using a microscope.
The rats tested 10,000 saliva samples and identified about 77 per cent of infected saliva samples, but the rats scored better, nearly 92 percent, with cultured bacteria.
"Tuberculosis is a growing worldwide epidemic," said Bart Weetjens, a Belgian research organization hosted by Sokoine University of Agriculture in Tanzania.
"It makes sense to detect those cases to be able to treat them."
About 2.5 million people are expected to die from TB in 2003, with Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia the hardest hit, New Scientist said.
