Parkinson’s disease affects brain tissue over several years, resulting in symptoms including involuntary tremors in specific body parts, reduced mobility, and rigid, inflexible muscles.
Currently, no definitive test exists for Parkinson’s, with diagnosis depending on clinical assessment, symptom evaluation, family medical history, and neurological examination.
Joy Milne from Scotland had been in a relationship with her husband Les since she was 16 years old.
However, in 1982, just before his 32nd birthday, she detected a change in her husband’s natural scent.
Science has established that human odor changes with aging due to a substance called 2-nonenal, which increases in the body over time.
Reflecting on that period, she shared with 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.”
Following Les’s diagnosis, the couple participated in a Parkinson’s support group where Joy experienced an overwhelmingly familiar odor.
Joy has subsequently dedicated herself to assisting scientists in developing a method to utilize her enhanced olfactory abilities for early Parkinson’s disease identification.
“Les and I should have been enjoying retirement, but Parkinson’s had stolen our lives,” Joy explained. “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’s extraordinary ability has now inspired researchers to create a diagnostic swab for detecting Parkinson’s before traditional diagnosis methods.
A research team at the University of Manchester in the UK has developed this skin swab, which demonstrates 95 percent accuracy under laboratory conditions.
To create this test, researchers analyzed sebum, a skin-produced substance, comparing samples from individuals with Parkinson’s disease against those without the condition.
They identified thousands of distinct compounds, with 500 showing differences between the two groups.
Professor Perdita Barran, who directed the research, stated: “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 discussed how an earlier diagnosis could have impacted her family’s experience, noting: “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.”