Professor Monty Silverdale gave a fantastic talk for the Pint of Science event in Manchester in May.

He told the amazing story of Joy Milne, a ‘super-smeller’ from Edinburgh, who noticed an unusual musky smell on her husband, Les, 12 years before he developed Parkinson’s disease (PD).

This chance finding suggested that skin chemicals may be altered in PD.

Prof Silverdale and his team have performed a large study analysing skin swabs of Parkinson’s disease and control participants across the UK.

The results demonstrate altered skin chemicals in people with PD, which they hope will enable them to develop a simple skin swab test for PD. 

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