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Giant Rats Detect Tuberculosis
from Science News
Low-income countries struggling to keep tuberculosis under control might get a boost from an unlikely source--giant African rats. The big rodents spotted hundreds of TB-positive sputum samples that a standard microscope test missed on first pass, researchers report in the December American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.
The TB bacterium currently infects one in three people worldwide, the World Health Organization estimates, with the highest rates in Africa. Giant African rats, also called Gambian pouched rats (Cricetomys gambianus), are native to much of Africa and have been used before to sniff out land mines.
... The rats are exposed to sputum samples through holes in the floor of a cage, and if they correctly pause for five seconds to smell a TB sample, they are rewarded with a mouthful of banana. Lingering over non-TB samples gets no reward. Eventually, the rats can check a string of holes moving "about as fast as they can walk ..."
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