"The problem is that the most lethal form seems to be the most difficult to detect," said the head of the institute's cancer program, Professor Georgia Chenevix-Trench.
"We have found a whole little factory of supernovas, and there are probably more that we don't have the sensitivity to detect," said Dr. Susan G. Neff of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, who led the observing team.
EPO is hard to detect, said Dr. Gary Wadler, an international drug expert and a professor of medicine at New York University, because the "effect of the drug outlasts its detectability".
And with fewer problems to detect, said Dr. Eduardo L. Franco, a professor of epidemiology and oncology at McGill University, the technicians who read Pap smears may lower their guard -- and their accuracy.
"We really wanted to understand what some of the factors were that limit dogs' abilities to detect," said Sarah Reed, the study's lead author and a conservation biologist with Colorado State University and the Wildlife Conservation Society.
Severe and even some moderate traumatic brain injuries are usually obvious and easy to detect, said Dr. Felise S. Zollman, medical director of the brain injury program at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, which will help the state carry out the new program.
