There’s an association between seborrheic dermatitis and Parkinson’s. Seborrheic dermatitis gives a fairly distinct odour. It will be interesting to see whether she can detect PD among patients without extensive seb. derm.
A woman who can smell Parkinson's is inspiring research into diagnosis (2020)
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Re: A woman who can smell Parkinson's is inspiring research into diagnosis (2020)
#42They didn't mention looking for other people with the same ability. Maybe other or many or most people can do it, if they know what to look for. If I smell something bad, I never consider that it might be a disease.
It seems safe to assume she has an especially good nose -- I figure she's the olfactory version of a tetrachromat[1] or supertaster[2]. She also had a relatively rare coincidence where she married somebody before his Parkinson's presented, and she witnessed its progression. I would assume that she isn't globally unique in her ability, but finding others with it is a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem: how do you effici…
> It seems safe to assume she has an especially good nose
I wouldn't assume anything. And it might not be related to sensitivity in general, but sensitivity to a particular chemical. (Also, is the perception of smell tied only to sensory aparatus in the nose?)
> finding others with it is a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem: how do you efficiently screen for this without knowing the precise compounds are to be targeted?
Expose them to people with Parkinson's; based on her experience, it seems like a quick test. In her case, they tested it with t-shirts worn by people with Parkinson's.
Re: A woman who can smell Parkinson's is inspiring research into diagnosis (2020)
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mass specs can detect down to the ten thousands? IIRC or so molecules.
But I don't think they can do that at the same time as having trillions of some other uninteresting molecule like water in them. It's basically a dynamic range problem.
Mass specs would have this problem, yes. That's why they are usually paired with chromatography of some sort (usually GC/MS or LC/MS). The GC or LC more or less reduce a mixture into components, which are fed into the mass spectrometer to analyze what those components are.
Re: A woman who can smell Parkinson's is inspiring research into diagnosis (2020)
#44> But Joy's superpower is so unusual that researchers all over the world have started working with her and have discovered that she can identify several kinds of illnesses — tuberculosis, Alzheimer's disease, cancer and diabetes. The story for diagnosing Parkinson’s sounded plausible until this sentence. With Parkinson’s, you could imagine that she had some sort of sensitivity in her smell to a certain biomarker. Now…
If you read the report OP linked, it says they did a blind test where she was given shirts that had been worn by a variety of people some of who had Parkinsons for differing length of time, and some who had not, and she was able to get them all, including what they though was a false positive until that person came back months later to say they had developed it (similar to how she's been able to smell it on her husband before he was symptomatic).
Re: A woman who can smell Parkinson's is inspiring research into diagnosis (2020)
#45> But Joy's superpower is so unusual that researchers all over the world have started working with her and have discovered that she can identify several kinds of illnesses — tuberculosis, Alzheimer's disease, cancer and diabetes. The story for diagnosing Parkinson’s sounded plausible until this sentence. With Parkinson’s, you could imagine that she had some sort of sensitivity in her smell to a certain biomarker. Now…
Advanced lung cancer has a strong, very distinctive smell.
Re: A woman who can smell Parkinson's is inspiring research into diagnosis (2020)
#46I would hate to have that ability. The temptation to use it as a curse would be too great. You spilled water on my shoe! sniff I curse your grandfather with dementia! And when grandad got dementia they would think of me and hate me and wonder if evil magic was real.
Are you a bad person then? I looks like this woman was able to put her ability into noble use. Why couldn't you?
Re: A woman who can smell Parkinson's is inspiring research into diagnosis (2020)
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Aroma and smell training kits exist for people into wine, beer and so on: https://aromaster.com/
Yes, but is there a notation, like there is for music? There's a whole pyramid scheme for perfumery, of course.
Notes are for frequency and there are marks for intensity, but you still have to write down what instrument is used.
In general in the vocabulary of smells you try first to understand the instrument (certain fruit, manure, sea, etc) and then the intensity of it.
I'm not very familiar how the intensity and variations are described but I presume that it is not as formal as in the case of music.
But it has no help if you can't smell it (the frequency is out of the hearing limit) or you can't recognize the instrument from the noise.
Re: A woman who can smell Parkinson's is inspiring research into diagnosis (2020)
#48My grandfather had Parkinson's and always had a distinctive smell... when this finding first came out oh, maybe a decade ago, I knew exactly what they were talking about. Had another friend in adulthood - yup, same smell, and yes she was found to have Parkinson's. I don't have a particularly great nose, but it's a super distinctive smell.
Re: A woman who can smell Parkinson's is inspiring research into diagnosis (2020)
#49If a human can discern the scents so well can animals like dogs be trained to do the same and maybe much more?
Re: A woman who can smell Parkinson's is inspiring research into diagnosis (2020)
#50My grandfather had Parkinson's and always had a distinctive smell... when this finding first came out oh, maybe a decade ago, I knew exactly what they were talking about. Had another friend in adulthood - yup, same smell, and yes she was found to have Parkinson's. I don't have a particularly great nose, but it's a super distinctive smell.
Could you describe the smell?