Dogs have been trained to detect the scent of ovarian cancer, according to reseachers in Sweden and Hungary.

They said in a news release that the dogs could even distinguish various grades of and types of cancer and could tell a problem with the ovaries from other problems such as cervical and endometrial cancer.

Ovarian cancer has a high mortality rate, primarily due to late diagnosis, the release said. Recent studies have shown that dogs have successfully detected cancer through scent. However, it was not clear whether they're responding to the cancer itself or odors associated with cancer.

"While we do not believe that dogs should be used in clinical practice, because they may be influenced during their work, leading to changes in the accuracy rates, still, under controlled circumstances, they may be used in experiments to further explore this very interesting new property of malignancies," the researchers wrote.