Sixty seconds on . . . the woman who can smell Parkinson’s

Sounds like a TV documentaryIt probably could be. The synopsis? Scientists harness the power of a woman’s hypersensitive sense of smell to develop a new test that can determine whether people have Parkinson’s disease.1I’m hooked. Who’s the main protagonist?Joy Milne, a 72 year old from Perth in Scotland. She has hereditary hyperosmia, a rare condition that gives her a heightened sense of smell, which she first noticed when her late husband, Les, developed a different musky aroma before being diagnosed with Parkinson’s.I smell a medical breakthrough . . .Your sense does not deceive you. Milne’s observation prompted academics at the University of Manchester to investigate what she could smell, and whether this could be used to help identify people with Parkinson’s. Their results,2 published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, show that there are lipids of high molecular weight that are substantially more active in people suffering from…
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