Her Incredible Sense Of Smell Is Helping Scientists Find New Ways To Diagnose Disease

 

For most of her life, Joy Milne had a superpower that she was totally oblivious to. She simply had no idea she possessed an utterly amazing, slightly terrifying biological gift that scientists would itch to study.

In fact, Joy probably would have stayed oblivious if it hadn’t been for her husband Les Milne.

The two met in high school. Les was a 17-year-old swimmer and Joy was 16, a new transfer. She remembers dancing with him at a party and being struck by his wonderful smell. “He had a lovely male musk smell. He really did,” she recalls.

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But then one day, about 10 years into the marriage when Les was 31, he came home and strangely, Joy says, he smelled different. “His lovely male musk smell had got this overpowering sort of nasty yeast smell,” she says.

Unfortunately as the years peeled on, Joy began to feel that it wasn’t just her husband’s smell that was changing.

To begin, this was a new scientific discovery, but also, Joy had smelled the disease on Les more than a decade before his symptoms got severe enough for them to seek medical help. If Joy could predict Parkinson’s before its well-known symptoms, like shaking and sleep disruption, even started to appear, maybe she could work with researchers. It might lead to a breakthrough.

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Article URL : 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