Sniffing out Parkinson’s disease

The sense of smell is one of the least well understood of the senses. It has long been known that some dogs, and less commonly even humans, seem to be able to detect certain diseases from an odour on the breath or the skin. Researchers at University of Manchester’s Institute of Biotechnology (MIB) and investigated such a talent exhibited by one of their colleagues, and believe they may be able to translate her talent into a technological diagnostic technique.

Joy Milne, a retired nurse from Perth who is also a honorary lecturer at the University of Manchester, noticed some years ago that she could detect a musky odour on the skin of people suffering from Parkinson’s. She first noticed it on her husband, a decade before he was clinically diagnosed with the disease when he was 45. For the past three years, she has been working with the MIB on determining what it was that she was smelling. It was already known that Parkinson’s can cause excess production of sebum, the fatty bio fluid exuded by the skin as a natural moisturiser and protective barrier. In the journal ACS Central Science this week, the MIB team explains how it used mass spectrometry to analyse sebum from people who had previously been diagnosed to identify volatile components that might be producing the smell. Mrs Milne then checked the odour of these components determine which, if any of them, she could recognise.