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Rats have long been guilty of spreading disease. But now they’ve gone into the diagnosis side. Because rats can be trained to spot tuberculosis—and to do it better than conventional techniques. The finding is in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.
老鼠一直因為傳播疾病而臭名昭著。但它們也能為診斷疾病做貢獻了，因為老鼠經(jīng)過訓(xùn)練可以測出肺結(jié)核，而且比傳統(tǒng)技術(shù)做得更好。這項研究發(fā)表在美國《熱帶醫(yī)學(xué)與衛(wèi)生學(xué)》雜志上。

TB is the number-one infectious disease killer in the world. Early detection saves lives. But the most common way to diagnose TB, visually checking sputum samples for the microbe that causes the disease, requires sophisticated equipment and trained personnel. And it’s not all that accurate.
肺結(jié)核是全球頭號傳染病殺手，發(fā)現(xiàn)得早能救你一命。觀看檢測唾液樣本中的病菌是最常用的肺結(jié)核診斷方法，但這需要精密的儀器和受過訓(xùn)練的人員才能進行。這種方式并不精確。

That’s why the rats come in. The critters are easy to train and can smell chemicals present with a TB infection. So scientists sent more than 20,000 sputum samples from 10,000 patients in Tanzania to be analyzed microscopically. They then presented the same samples to the rats. The results: the fancy microscopes found about 13 percent of the patients to be TB-positive. The rats identified an additional 620 cases, boosting the detection rate by 44 percent.
這就是老鼠參與檢測的原因了。這小家伙容易訓(xùn)練，而且可以嗅出帶有肺結(jié)核 感染的化學(xué)物質(zhì)。因此，科學(xué)家們寄出2萬份來自1萬名坦桑尼亞患者的唾液樣本，并用顯微鏡來分析。他們又為老鼠提供了相同的樣本。結(jié)果就是：價格高昂的顯 微鏡檢測到約13%呈肺結(jié)核陽性的患者，老鼠則多辨認出了620份樣本，檢測率提高了44%。

That may not sound like much, but remember a person with TB can infect another dozen or so people over the course of a year. So that’s more than 7000 people that could be saved by a rat.
這數(shù)字似乎沒什么了不起。但請記?。阂幻谓Y(jié)核患者在一年中可以感染十幾個人。所以老鼠可以挽救7000多條人命喲。

—Karen Hopkin

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