The woman who can smell Parkinson's disease - BBC News

Joy Milne has an incredible sense of smell that is able to recognise Parkinson's disease on the human body.
She detected Parkinson's on her husband, Les, 10 years before he was diagnosed by doctors.
Now Joy, from Perth, is using her ability to help scientists develop a diagnostic test for the condition.

[DownhillAllTheWay]

Joy Milne's husband had this smell for 10 years before she found out what was causing it. There may be lots of people around who have smelled it, but have no idea what the odour means.

[nursekat]

Imagine being a nurse with acute sense of smell. I have the same problem. It's scary when you detect a smell. You know something is wrong with the person, but you don't know what exactly

[andrewjones-productions]

What a fantastic discovery. Since we're able to train dogs to assist law enforcement teams to sniff out drugs, explosives etc., thanks to Joy, we may now be able to train dogs to help diagnose Parkinson's disease. If we could find people like Joy, that would even better, but as she pointed out, she is but a very small part of the population. Perhaps a machine that could respond to the smell could also be developed. We do after all have machines and gadgets to do alcohol and substance tests. Her name befits her as this discovery will help bring 'joy' to many people. Who knows, discovering the smell may even be a clue to finding a cure.

[BrendanB]

I was diagnosed when I was 25. Id like to get ahold of this woman.

[thereptileroomeh]

I have a 62 year old friend MSA (Parkinsons on crack). I've always thought the smell was attributable to a lack in mobility whilst he cleaned himself. But this makes sense

[trialshoppl]

I can feel a pungent sweet-ish musky smell from some people. Mostly old but I recently came across a middle aged man and a 30-ish year old woman with this smell which was a bizzare experience considering I always associated it with old folks. My wife can't smell it. I wish I could find out somehow what this smell is.

[orando]

67, I hope they find a medical breakthrough cuz their time is limited.

[Greenpoloboy]

This is nice. The sense of smell we have is a wonderful gift

[AirWindFire]

Incredible. To think that biochemistry changes because of disease kind of makes sense, but I never thought of it that way, the disease isn’t in areas of my body, my body is diseased and acting as a whole. I wonder what MS smells like.

[ghastlycreations]

God bless this woman i hope she can help lots of people.

[jeanmarr]

I think maybe I can do this too. I kept bugging my husband to go to the doctor because something was wrong, but I couldn't identify what it was. Or maybe it was just something I saw, but couldn't put my finger on. I definitely know that smell now though, almost 20 years after diagnosis.

[gendoll]

I’m surprised they don’t train dogs to do this. I imagine it couldn’t be that hard ya know. They train them to detect drugs, if diseases have a smell I’m sure they could train dogs to detect and alert to it as well.

[chrisfuller]

I have been able to smell cemeteries my whole life even ancient cemeteries where the headstones have all dissolved. They smell a little bit like lilacs to me.

[chaii_latte]

So what was the molecule responsible for the smell? They never said..

[joycewalbert]

I can smell it too!!! My ex just died, but I knew he had this "dead skin" smell on ALL of his clothes- in his car etc... I'm afraid my son has it now- but he will NOT acknowledge it...wants t ignore it.

[ylrveuw]

The reason is very understandable. Changes in intestinal bacteria (so-called "dysbiosis")cause various diseases. I think Parkinson's disease is one of them, there may be an odor in substances that accumulate excessively.

[keitymarley]

Parkinson disease is a very terrible illness, my Dad suffered from it for 19 years until we finally got a help and a medicine that truly works that helped treat, cure and reversed all his symptoms. My Dad is well again.

[robertharrold]

I too can smell a very unpleasant death smell on people in a large crowd or city location. I feel like a bloodhound of particular decay.

[msmuffet_]

My mum never had parkinsons or cancer but I did notice a smell, I also noticed the same smell on strangers in the supermarket.I know it wasn't cancer as I'm familiar with that smell.I still to this day don't know what caused it.

[maxheadroom]

Animals like Dogs can sense things people can't and they have a good sense of smell some people say they can detect if people are ill.