Currently Parkinson\u2019s disease can only be diagnosed after a neurological consultation, which leaves patients waiting months\u2014or years\u2014after the onset of symptoms for treatment to begin. For sufferers of Parkinson\u2019s disease an early diagnosis leads to significantly better outcomes in treatment and quality of life. Now, one woman\u2019s unique talent has led to a scientific breakthrough for earlier diagnosis of the disease.<\/p>\n
When Joy Milne\u2019s husband was diagnosed with an advanced case of Parkinson\u2019s disease it prompted the pair to recall when, twelve years earlier, Joy had noted that her husband Les\u2019s scent had abruptly changed. The two joined support groups and Joy recognised the same distinctive musty smell on other sufferers.<\/p>\n
Joy worked with a group of scientists to uncover the link between this smell and the disease. As part of a test, Joy was asked to identify which shirts had been worn by Parkinson\u2019s patients and which had not. She only made one error, misidentifying one of the control group\u2019s shirts for that of a patient\u2014until eight months later when that person also received a Parkinson\u2019s diagnosis.<\/p>\n
Now, a team at the University of Manchester has developed a skin-swab test that is 95% accurate at identifying Parkinson\u2019s disease. And there is hope that within the next two years the test will be taken outside of laboratory conditions and start to be used as a diagnostic tool, a change that will undoubtably speed up the diagnostic process and allow patients to pursue treatment much earlier.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re interested in learning more about recent research<\/a> on Parkinson\u2019s disease, visit Griffith Research Online to read scholarly publications by Griffith researchers.<\/p>\n Source: https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/uk-scotland-62795737<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Currently Parkinson\u2019s disease can only be diagnosed after a neurological consultation, which leaves patients waiting months\u2014or years\u2014after the onset of symptoms for treatment to begin. For sufferers of Parkinson\u2019s disease an early diagnosis leads to significantly better outcomes in treatment and quality of life. Now, one woman\u2019s unique talent has led to a scientific breakthroughContinue reading “Good news! One woman\u2019s remarkable sense of smell brings hope of an earlier diagnosis for Parkinson\u2019s disease”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":152,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-students"],"acf":[],"modified_by":"Sharnie Stephens","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testblogs.griffith.edu.au\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testblogs.griffith.edu.au\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testblogs.griffith.edu.au\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testblogs.griffith.edu.au\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/152"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testblogs.griffith.edu.au\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/testblogs.griffith.edu.au\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15695\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testblogs.griffith.edu.au\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testblogs.griffith.edu.au\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testblogs.griffith.edu.au\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}