Joy Milne, a woman with an extraordinary sense of smell, discovered that she could detect Parkinson’s disease on her husband, Les, more than a decade before it was officially diagnosed. Les had a distinct odor that Joy noticed when he was 31. Years later, Joy attended a support group for Parkinson’s and realized that others with the disease had a similar smell. This led her to work with researchers who found that she could accurately identify Parkinson’s through odor alone, even in the absence of typical symptoms. This discovery could potentially lead to the development of a diagnostic tool for early detection of Parkinson’s.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/03/23/820274501/her-incredible-sense-of-smell-is-helping-scientists-find-new-ways-to-diagnose-di