Posted on 10/26/2015 9:42:41 AM PDT by Theoria
Joy Milne has always had a keen sense of smell, so she was unfazed when her husband, Les, began emitting a subtle musky odor.
He was an anesthesiologist who worked long hours, and Milne assumed the smell was just sweat. But with the change in scent came a growing tiredness that was explained by a devastating diagnosis six years later: Les had Parkinson’s disease.
“I could always smell things other people couldn’t smell,” Milne said during a BBC broadcast Thursday. After attending a meeting for the charity Parkinson’s UK, where the other Parkinson’s patients shared her husband’s musky scent, she realized that the odor might be tied to the condition.
After the 65-year-old Perth woman off-handedly mentioned this observation to a few scientists, they decided to investigate.
Researchers at the University of Edinburgh gave T-shirts to six people with Parkinson’s and six people without the disease. After the subjects wore the shirts, they were passed on to Milne, who then had to determine by smell whether each wearer had Parkinson’s.
Her diagnoses were eerily accurate — and have potentially groundbreaking implications for people living with the disease.
Milne made correct assessments for 11 out of the 12 cases. In the one case she got “wrong,” she insisted that a T-shirt worn by a member of the control group had the warning scent.
Eight months after the study was conducted, she was proven right, bringing her accuracy rate up to one hundred. The supposedly healthy individual contacted one of the doctors and informed him that he had, in fact, just been diagnosed with Parkinson’s.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
My mother-in-law’s little rescue mutt can tell (smell, I presume) when her blood glucose level is wrong (too high or too low). I think he has saved her life a few times.
Must be what is like to be a dog. They just have to look at people and say “really? You can’t smell that?”
I knew a doctor with Parkinson’s, and a good friend, now, who went through several t-shirts a day with massive musky sweating and apparently discolored the t shirts with their increased sweating.
Good doctors for centuries have relied on their olfactory senses, to go with their visual and auditory senses. They use all of their senses to make a diagnosis along with using their stethoscope and touch and feeling their patients.
So a non MD person with excellent olfactory sense might be able to sense this terrible disease and others.
too bad his parkinsons was brought on by years of cocaine abuse.
I had a close friend, who had parkinsons - he smelled "off" as well. It is not such a far fetched concept.....we perspire normally - if our chemicals are "off" or out of whack - it makes sense that tainted sweat would follow
except my wife, she always smells of lilacs
What Causes Parkinson’s Disease?
A Shortage of Dopamine
Parkinson’s disease occurs when nerve cells, or neurons, in an area of the brain that controls movement become impaired and/or die. Normally, these neurons produce an important brain chemical known as dopamine, but when the neurons die or become impaired, they produce less dopamine. This shortage of dopamine causes the movement problems of people with Parkinson’s.
Dopamine is a chemical messenger, or neurotransmitter. Dopamine is responsible for transmitting signals between the substantia nigra and multiple brain regions. The connection between the substantia nigra and the corpus striatum is critical to produce smooth, purposeful movement. Loss of dopamine in this circuit results in abnormal nerve-firing patterns within the brain that cause impaired movement.
Loss of Norepinephrine
People with Parkinson’s also have loss of the nerve endings that produce the neurotransmitter norepinephrine. Norepinephrine, which is closely related to dopamine, is the main chemical messenger of the sympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system controls many automatic functions of the body, such as heart rate and blood pressure. The loss of norepinephrine might help explain several of the non-movement features of Parkinson’s, such as fatigue, irregular blood pressure, decreased gastric motility or movement of food through the digestive tract, and postural hypotension. Postural hypotension is a sudden drop in blood pressure when a person stands up from a sitting or lying-down position. It may cause dizziness, lightheadedness, and in some cases, loss of balance or fainting.
http://nihseniorhealth.gov/parkinsonsdisease/whatcausesparkinsonsdisease/01.html
A recent ‘Castle’ TV show had a woman who had a heightened sense of smell. She was called ‘the Nose’. Glad some people have this gift. Probably glad I don’t. The women in the show was tormented by any unusual scent. Very uncomfortable to watch.
I think I am losing my sense of smell. I have to check out my dogs real close to tell when they need a bath.
Strong perfume still gives me a headache and I can smell cigarette smoke a block away, almost. Other smells, even good smelling food is getting less.
My bet is that it’s all leading back to sweat pores and the manufacture of sweat being in a state of change.
“If she can do this I bet you could train a Labrador to do exactly the same thing.”
Somebody will start a business training dogs to detect illnesses. No doubt about it that such will be more accurate than many ‘modern’ medical testing procedures. Though it seems foul, the odor urine puts off can probably be even more indicative of certain diseases, since urine, like sweat, is another way the body passes toxins. A million bucks start up cash would go a loooong way in setting up such a life saving business.
Seems obvious that a dog which can be trained to sniff out bombs might be similarly effective in this application.That doesn’t answer to the research issue of chemical composition being detected, but it would seem that diagnostic purposes would be answered by trained dogs.
They are already training dogs to detect cancer in patients by smell...
Husband was taking some sort of drug, for ulcerative
colitis I think. It was made from horse urine; and
the horseflies would chase him and sting him. It
left big welts and was painful.
I don’t know what causes parkinsons smell, but old people smell is thought to be caused by a chemical called 2-nonenal
There have been some studies suggesting that Heliobacter pylori, the bacteria that cause ulcers, may play a role in Parkinson’s disease.
Parkinson’s patients seem to suffer from high rates of constipation, before developing the other neurological symptoms.
I wonder if the musty odor would show up in people affected by H pylori, or is it something that only shows up after the brain begins to be affected.
I am “cursed” with an excellent sense of smell. It really is no fun. It has been handy a few times. I detected an electrical fire at work long before anyone else could smell it. All in all though it is a pain. Perfume, body odor, bad breathe etc. are really a problem.
Of course you could, once you knew what to look for. She provided that initial piece of info.
Were you the only one who noticed the smell?
I'm just the opposite. I have a poor sense of smell. I can only faintly detect the odors of a few things, like the sea air, cooking meat, perfume/flowers, and oddly enough, gasoline and ammonia. That's about it.
There are some things I would like to be able to smell, like smoke, natural gas, etc.
Excellent point!
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