Rodents Show Surprising Versatility to Help Fight Tuberculosis

For years, rats trained by the Dutch nonprofit Apopo have sniffed out TNT-laden landmines, accelerating the slow, painstaking process of de-mining in countries like Mozambique and Cambodia.

That work continues, but now the organization is pointing its rats’ noses at another global health problem: tuberculosis. The African giant-pouched rat, it turns out, can detect the infectious disease much faster than humans can process samples.

Apopo started its first rat TB-detection program in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in 2007. A single rat can check 100 TB samples in 20 minutes. It would take a lab technician using the traditional method of a smear microscopy — which has an accuracy rate of 20 to 60 percent — four days to get through that many samples. Research studies show rats can identify TB samples accurately more than 60 percent of the time, and often at rates much higher. The nonprofit says it has been able to increase the detection rates at partner clinics by more than 40 percent.

Each year there are about 10.8 million new cases of TB globally, and 1.8 million people die from the disease.

Because the rats work so fast, they’re especially valuable in densely populated areas, like big cities and prisons, says Charlie Richter, Apopo’s U.S. director.

With its rats already at work on TB in Tanzania and Mozambique, Apopo is now deploying them in Ethiopia with money from the Skoll and Elton John AIDS foundations.

Individual donors can adopt a rat and follow the animal’s work online starting at $7 a month. Apopo will soon offer larger sponsorship opportunities for foundations and companies, which will allow supporters to do things like name a rat after their CEO.

Here, a rat named Chewa screens samples for TB with his trainer Sezirahiga David Dario in an Apopo lab in Dar es Salaam.