(Rachel Baxter/ IFL Science) — Working out what’s wrong with someone can be a complex challenge for doctors. But what if they could diagnose a disease simply from a person’s smell? Well, a woman named Joy Milne has the superpower of sniffing out Parkinson’s disease, and it’s helping researchers develop the first-ever diagnostic test.
Caused by a loss of nerve cells in the brain area responsible for dopamine production, Parkinson’s disease can be a crippling condition. It can lead to involuntary tremors, slow movement, and stiff and inflexible muscles. It can also cause a range of other symptoms, from depression and anxiety to insomnia and memory loss. At the moment there is no cure, and diagnosis is based on the observation of symptoms alone.
We first learned that Joy Milne could smell Parkinson’s a few years back. Her husband, Les, had the disease, and she noticed a change in his scent years before his diagnosis. She then joined the charity Parkinson’s UK, only to discover that other sufferers of the condition shared his unique smell.
She shared her findings with scientists, prompting researchers at the University of Edinburgh to find out more. They gave her 12 T-shirts to smell – six had been worn by Parkinson’s sufferers and six worn by controls. She correctly identified the six people who had Parkinson’s, but also noticed the scent on the T-shirt from one of the controls. Amazingly, just a few months later, he too was diagnosed with the disease. (…)