{"id":2990,"date":"2019-03-22T17:01:45","date_gmt":"2019-03-22T17:01:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cmshub.wpengine.com\/?p=239888"},"modified":"2024-11-03T15:17:14","modified_gmt":"2024-11-03T15:17:14","slug":"this-amazing-woman-can-smell-alzheimers-parkinsons-and-cancer-years-before-diagnosis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/this-amazing-woman-can-smell-alzheimers-parkinsons-and-cancer-years-before-diagnosis\/","title":{"rendered":"This Amazing Woman Can Smell Alzheimer\u2019s, Parkinson\u2019s, and Cancer Years Before Diagnosis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joy Milne first started to notice that her husband, Les, smelled a little different than usual when he was about 35 years old. At first, she thought perhaps his hygiene habits had changed.<\/span>\u201cMy husband was a doctor. I was a nurse. I sensed a strange smell when he was around, and it caused a bit of contention, because I said he wasn\u2019t brushing his teeth and he wasn\u2019t showering and so on and so forth,\u201d recalls Joy.<\/span>But Les\u2019s hygiene habits hadn\u2019t changed, and the smell continued to grow worse. It had to be coming from somewhere, but Joy couldn\u2019t figure it out. She says she just had to be quiet about it, because it had become obvious that the smell wasn\u2019t something her husband was capable of fixing, no matter how intolerable it was for her.<\/span>\"\"<\/span>Photo: YouTube\/BBC News<\/span>
\n<\/span>\u201cI smelled it 10 to 12 years before Les was diagnosed. As the Parkinson\u2019s got worse, the smell got worse, and it became just part of him. But I, with my sensitive sense of smell, I could smell it all the time, and it became quite uncomfortable really, but I had the sense not to nag too much.\u201d<\/span>It wasn\u2019t until years later, after Les\u2019s Parkinson\u2019s diagnosis, when Joy and Les attended a Parkinson\u2019s meeting and Joy realized what was going on with the smell. All the people at the meeting had the same odd smell as her husband, which she describes as a \u201cheavy thick musk\u201d scent.<\/span>\u201cMy nose just thought \u2018wow,’\u201d says Joy.<\/span>\"\"<\/span>Photo: YouTube\/BBC News<\/span>
\n<\/span>Sadly, Joy\u2019s miraculous talent was not enough to save Les from the terrible disease. He was diagnosed at age 45 and died at age 65. But since his death, Joy has been working with researchers to figure out the smelly phenomenon and create a new definitive diagnostic test<\/a> for Parkinson\u2019s so that the disease might be detected early and treated effectively in the future.<\/span>\u201cIt\u2019s horrible watching your partner change like that,\u201d says Joy. \u201cIf we get the test right, then we\u2019ll never get to that stage, because at that stage of diagnosis, 60 to 70 percent of neural damage is already done.\u201d<\/span>\"\"<\/span>Photo: YouTube\/BBC News<\/span>
\n<\/span>Joy has spent countless hours in the lab, smelling specimens from people with and without Parkinson\u2019s disease to prove that she\u2019s capable of distinguishing between them. Now that it\u2019s been proven, her laboratory work has a different aim\u2014determining what exactly it is that she\u2019s smelling to enable researchers to develop a new approach to early diagnosis.<\/span>So far, the answer seems to be linked to biomarkers in sebum<\/a>, the oily secretion that keeps our skin and hair lubricated. People with Parkinson\u2019s are known to secrete a higher amount of sebum, and it appears their sebum may also be made up of slightly different components than normal, including an excess of hippuric acid, eicosane, and octadecanal.<\/span>\"\"<\/span>Photo: YouTube\/BBC News<\/span>
\n<\/span>\u201cThis could have a huge impact not only for earlier and conclusive diagnosis but also help patients monitor the effect of therapy,\u201d says researcher Perdita Barran from the University of Manchester in the UK.<\/span>\u201cI\u2019m in a tiny tiny branch of the population somewhere between a dog and a human,\u201d says Joy. She recalls that she didn\u2019t think it was an insult when she was first compared to a canine, because she knew her superhuman sense of smell was something precious.<\/span>Interestingly enough, Joy believes it\u2019s more than Parkinson\u2019s that she\u2019s capable of smelling. She also thinks she can smell the distinct scent of Alzheimer\u2019s disease and cancer, and she also plans to work with the research team to see if she\u2019s capable of detecting tuberculosis<\/a>. Joy also says she\u2019s not the only one. She believes other caretakers of people with diseases like Parkinson\u2019s and Alzheimer\u2019s are also capable of smelling their disease, although they may not realize what it is.<\/span>\u201cPeople with Parkinson\u2019s and their carers and their families, they will tell you that smell is there,\u201d she says.<\/span>Check out the video below to learn more about Joy\u2019s amazing work in this field of research.<\/span>Proper BCS greatergood_ctg_abovevideo<\/span><\/span>Source<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joy Milne first started to notice that her husband, Les, smelled a little different than usual when he was about 35 years old. At first, she thought perhaps his hygiene habits had changed.\u201cMy husband was a doctor. I was a nurse. I sensed a strange smell when he was around, and it caused a bit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2991,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5137],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2990"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2990\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44548,"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2990\/revisions\/44548"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}