Woman who can smell Parkinson's helps scientists develop test to detect it with 95% accuracy

Wow that is actually incredible!

Joy Milne started noticing a strange smell on her husband that would not go away. She always complained about it but there was nothing he could do and nobody else could smell it.

Years later he was diagnosed with parkinsons. He went to a support group and took her with him and everyone had that strange smell. So she made the connection.

Then she went to a public lecture of a medical professor specialized in parkinson and told her story.

He dismissed her at first but then read a story about dogs who can smell diseases. So he contacted her and made an experiment. She should determine if someone has parkinson by the smell of their t-shirt, without even seeing them.

She got everyone right, except one... until the this guy was diagnosed a couple years later with parkinson. So she was better than any diagnostic method of that time.

Now, a team in the University of Manchester, working with Joy, has developed a simple skin-swab test which they claim is 95% accurate under laboratory conditions when it comes to telling whether people have Parkinson's.

There is not currently a chemical test for Parkinson's disease and many thousands of people were on waiting lists for a neurological consultation.

So developing a confirmatory test that could be used by a general practitioner would be "transformative".

Hopefully this will be accepted in the near future… [Journal of the American Chemical Society and BBC]