Woman who can smell Parkinson's!

Derek W · 20 Mar 2019 at 07:51

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-47627179

Just seen this on the BBC and Scottish news. Woman in Scotland noticed a change in her husband's smell nearly 15yrs before being diagnosed. She's now helping with medical research to help identify Parkinsons sufferers.

She did an experiment smelling 12 t shirts .6 with Parkinsons 6 from a controlled group. She identified 7 so the doctors thought 11 out Of 12 wasn't bad. The 7th one was later diagnosed with Parkinson's so managed to identify it early on. Fascinating stuff.

Diddums · 20 Mar 2019 at 07:53

She's the next Paul the octopus.

opstrat · 20 Mar 2019 at 07:59

Wonder if she can smell the euro millions

iamdjdz · 20 Mar 2019 at 08:09

I know nothing about the cure for Parkinson's but this would be pretty good to have in a GP checkup once reaching retirement or maybe earlier. Looks like they can recreate her ability using mass spectrometry and she apparently picked it up early on one of the control subjects who wasn't diagnosed at the time.

Dis86 · 20 Mar 2019 at 08:11

Bet she's a hoot at a party.

Hey joy, what do you think of my new perfume...

tom_nieto · 20 Mar 2019 at 08:16

Can she smell the cheese?

In all seriousness this is a very interesting line of enquiry into biomarker discovery for disease. It just so happens that this lady is very sensitive to a particular molecule which Parkinson’s patients appear to produce or metabolise differently. Would be interesting to grind up the t shirts and run them through a mass spectrometer.

Freakbro · 20 Mar 2019 at 08:17

Yea, saw this a few years ago, the story is an update as they have worked out how/why she can do it.

Diddums · 20 Mar 2019 at 08:18

Freakbro said:
Yea, saw this a few years ago, the story is an update as they have worked out how/why she can do it.

Well spit it out then! She's an octopus who identifies as a human, isn't she?

Diddums · 20 Mar 2019 at 08:20

I can smell the common cold. Not only that, I can smell it over the internet. You'll all have it in the next 15 years, every single one of you.

You mark my words!

Freakbro · 20 Mar 2019 at 08:25

Diddums said:
Well spit it out then! She's an octopus who identifies as a human, isn't she?

It's in the article, she's just sensitive to the smell of a couple of chemicals that people with Parkinsons produce in greater quantities.

We've seen similar things with dogs that can smell cancer etc but that's more common since their sense of smell is thousands (millions?) of times more sensitive than humans

Yaayuh! · 20 Mar 2019 at 13:17

But can she smell what The Rock is cooking?

Chojin · 20 Mar 2019 at 13:24

Is she like a female Hannibal Lecter?

mmj_uk · 20 Mar 2019 at 13:24

It's like those dogs who when trained can sense when their owner is about to have a seizure and warn them, mindblowing stuff.

Tek81 · 20 Mar 2019 at 13:25

Seeing as how Parkinsons affects the autonomic nervous system, I would guess that she is just smelling for sweat. The control group is far too small to come to any definite conclusion.

Yadda · 20 Mar 2019 at 13:29

mmj_uk said:
It's like those dogs who when trained can sense when their owner is about to have a seizure and warn them, mindblowing stuff.

Anyone brave enough to sniff my t-shirt on some days has a fairly high chance of suffering a seizure tbh. :eek:

CaptainRAVE · 20 Mar 2019 at 13:32

Amazing this hasn’t been noticed before. Not sure what use it is though.

monkentage · 20 Mar 2019 at 14:06

Does she like liver and amarone?

Maccy · 20 Mar 2019 at 14:07

I'll do the obligatory "Parkinson's what?" post this time

Thekwango · 20 Mar 2019 at 14:12

CaptainRAVE said:
Not sure what use it is though.

from the article in the op.

"What we might hope is if we can diagnose people earlier, before the motor symptoms come in, that there will be treatments that can prevent the disease spreading. So that's really the ultimate ambition."

CaptainRAVE · 20 Mar 2019 at 14:27

I wondered about early detection, but didn’t realise that there was anything we could do to slow/prevent it. Interesting.