A New Way to Detect Parkinson’s—by Smell

Here’s where Joy Milne comes in, a woman who first noticed a "musky" smell on her husband Les, who was diagnosed years later with Parkinson's disease. It turns out that Joy can distinguish the unique Parkinson's odor before clinical symptoms appear in a person’s sebum—the moisturizing, waterproofing wax that protects the skin produced by sebaceous glands. Characterizing the compounds linked to this distinctive odor in sebum could enable rapid, early screening of Parkinson’s disease as well as provide insights into changes that occur as the disease progresses. Which is exactly what researchers were able to do—chemically define the scent in sebum that Milne is picking up on in Parkinson's patients.

In preliminary tests to identify the origin of the scent, Joy inspected T-shirts and medical gauze that had sampled the upper backs of Parkinson’s patients. The odor was not present in the armpits and instead was on the forehead and upper back—not surprisingly, areas of high sebum production. The researchers then tested and compared the sebum samples from the upper backs of 43 Parkinson’s patients and 21 matched healthy subjects to discover volatile organic compounds linked to disease. To investigate the aroma-causing chemicals, the researchers used a sophisticated analytical technology: thermal desorption-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. With it, the researchers shortened the list of Parkinson’s smell-causing candidates from the hundreds to just 17. Joy confirmed that mixing all 17 identified chemicals, or specific combinations of just nine or four, closely matched the musky fragrance she smelled on Parkinson’s patients, demonstrating that, indeed, these chemicals contribute to the unique smell associated with Parkinson’s.
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