Can one smell Parkinson's disease?

Found this to be an interesting story. A Scottish women named Joy Milne says she can smell Parkinson's.

She is a former nurse and her husband developed the illness. Milne says she noticed the smell of Parkinson's ten years before her husband was diagnosed with the illness. After going to a Parkinson's meeting, she knew what the smell was.

A research group at the University of Manchester has tested her ability to detect patients with Parkinson's, successfully. They are now trying to develop a diagnostic test so the illness can be diagnosed sooner.

Here's a BBC video on Milne from last year:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB0QgwVffvk

And a short article by the Guardian about a recent paper on the development of the test (by Tom Fielden) https://www.theguardian.com/society...elps-develop-swab-test-for-parkinsons-disease [EDIT: The publication is Triverdi et al. (2019). Discovery of Volatile Biomarkers of Parkinson’s Disease from Sebum.]

This may sound weird, but I would very much want Joy Milne to smell me...

Not for Parkinson's, but who knows that ME/CFS has its own odor?

 

I had read about her a few years back, some scientists were going to try to isolate what she was smelling. Never heard about it again till now

 

It would be nice to see if this woman can smell any other diseases.

 

malaria
- socks

prostate cancer
- urine

diabetes
- breath / sweat

parkinson
- odor

breast cancer
- breath

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/nov/04/five-diseases-that-dogs-can-detect

 

Sepsis smelled like foisty wet hay

 

This one doesn't know, but doubts this one can, having met someone with Parkinson's and not smelt much beyond the beer they were drinking and the rollup they were smoking (it was a while ago, when the disabled were still allowed to smoke in places that sold beer).

I thought they had dogs that smelt diseases these days, pretty sure I've seen that on TV, or maybe that was a dream. But I'm fairly sure dogs have better sniffers than women from Scotland. Cheaper to feed and take up less space as well (important if you're looking to roll out a few hundred thousand of them).

 

I asked Caroline from the Biobank about this the last time she came to take samples from me. She said it was something the Biobank team were looking into – in fact I think she said they had a meeting scheduled about it the next day. Do know anything more about it @Jonathan Edwards?

 

The story from a few years back was that she was able to pick out people with Parkinsons blinded and insisted one person had it who didn't but later developed it

 

They have been using/are using dogs for this (identifying disease) for a long time

https://massivesci.com/articles/dogs-smell-diseases-diagnose-cancer-diabetes/

Dogs are also being trained to smell malaria and other diseases; I saw a documentary on it not that long ago (sorry can't remember where/what it was called).

eta: in Outlander (TV series) the nun/medic at the hospital has a little dog that she uses (not a terribly scientific reference I know but shows its not necessarily a new idea).

eta2: sorry just spotted roller* already mentioned it.

 

ME/CFS probably smells like being unable to wash because of exhaustion, with a flavor of left-over deep freeze pizza.

 

Actually, thinking back to very early on I remember thinking 'I smell like Neil';
(Neil was an odd fellow at work who developed diabetes).