Health
Scottish Woman’s Super-Smeller Ability Leads To Breakthrough Parkinson’s Test
A rare’superpower’ that allowed her to’smell’ her husband’s illness 12 years before it manifested is helping researchers develop new diagnostic techniques.
Slow movement, stiff and inflexible muscles, and uncontrollable shaking of certain body parts are some of the signs of Parkinson’s disease, a condition in which sections of the brain deteriorate over many years.
As of right now, there is no test for Parkinson’s disease; instead, a neurological examination, assessment, symptoms, and family history are used to make the diagnosis.
From Scotland, Joy Milne has been married to Les since she was sixteen years old.
But she became aware that her husband’s fragrance was changing in 1982, just before his 32nd birthday.
The reason why a person’s smell changes with age has already been determined by science, and it all boils down to a chemical called 2-nonenal that is present in the human body in greater amounts as we age.
Recalling the time, she told The Guardian, “In 1982, before Les’s 32nd birthday, I noticed a musky, dank odour on him – he knew about my heightened sense of smell. I thought it might be the unprocessed air of the operating theatres he worked in and told him to shower more. That caused arguments.”
Joy was struck by an overpoweringly familiar odour at a Parkinson’s support group after Les’ diagnosis.
Since then, Joy has done everything in her power to assist researchers in developing a method for using her sense of smell to detect Parkinson’s disease early.
“Les and I should have been enjoying retirement, but Parkinson’s had stolen our lives,” said Joy.
“We became determined that others wouldn’t suffer the same way. When Les died in June 2015, he made me promise I’d carry on. I spent time in labs, smelling sufferers’ T-shirts and swabs for sebum – the skin oil we all produce, which changes with the onset of Parkinson’s.”
Joy has now motivated researchers to create a swab that can assist identify Parkinson’s disease before a diagnosis is made.
The skin swab was created by a group of academics at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, and they claim that it is 95 percent accurate in laboratory settings.
In order to create the test, they compared individuals with and without Parkinson’s disease by analysing sebum, a material found on the skin.
500 of the thousands of distinct chemicals they discovered differed between the two groups.
Professor Perdita Barran, who led the research, said, “At the moment we have developed it in a research lab and we are now working with colleagues in hospital analytical labs to transfer our test to them so that it can work within an NHS environment.”
“We are hoping within two years to be able to start to test people in the Manchester area.”
Joy has spoken about what an earlier diagnosis would have meant for her family, explaining, “We would have spent more time with family.”
“We would have travelled more. If we had known earlier it might have explained the mood swings and depression.”
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