Joy Milne noticed a musky note in the scent of her husband, Les, years before he was diagnosed with the conditionScientists have found the first parts of a possible chemical test for Parkinson’s thanks to the nose of a Scottish woman who can smell the disease. Joy Milne, a 67-year-old retired nurse from Perth, began to notice an increasingly musky note in the scent of her husband, Les, about a decade before he was diagnosed with the condition in 1997. A subsequent experiment by researchers at the University of Edinburgh established that Mrs Milne could accurately determine which of a dozen T-shirts had been worn by Parkinson’s patients from their smell. The academics now say that they have identified ten volatile compounds that are distinctive to the skin of people with the disease and could form the basis for a simple test. Parkinson’s affects about…

Source: The Times December 19, 2017 00:00 UTC