Parkinson»s disease can be identified by smell

A native resident of Scotland helped British scientists create a rapid test for Parkinson’s disease.

Parkinson’s is a neurological disease that’s very difficult to diagnose. Most often, patients turn to doctors when the disease is already in its advanced state. This is when the characteristic limb tremor appears. More than 10 million people worldwide suffer from this disease. In Luxembourg, the number of known cases hovers around 1200.

The revolutionary test method is now being tested in laboratories. It was born thanks to a Scottish woman. She’s noticed a change in her husband’s skin smell many years before he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. Scientists became interested in this skin feature and conducted a series of tests. As a result, it turned out that a sick person’s sebum (under-skin fat) has a certain set of unique compounds a healthy person doesn’t have.

Laboratory tests have confirmed this hunch. They’re based around skin swabs taken around the cervical-shoulder zone. Now this new diagnostic method needs to undergo clinical trials. After, it’ll be possible for the test to enter the mass market. If the testing proves effective, it could doctors diagnose the disease long before the onset of external symptoms, start treating it quicker and significantly reduce the number of deaths caused by Parkinson’s.