Researchers will teach dogs to diagnose Parkinson's disease

Dogs are not only the best friends of a person, but also irreplaceable helpers in many things. For example, next week, scientists launch a new project, the goal of which is to teach two Labradors and a Cocker Spaniel to distinguish the smell of people who suffer from Parkinson's disease. To do this, dogs will have to check the smell of 700 people to recognize the molecules that appear in the body in humans before they develop Parkinson's disease.

Features of the new project

This project is a partnership between Manchester University and the research charitable company Medical Detection Dogs. Three dogs will sniff the odor samples, after which the researchers use a mass spectrometer to identify the molecules that determine the "Parkinson smell". Dogs will have to learn to distinguish each such molecule that scientists can detect.

"The smell of Parkinson's"

The connection between a certain odor and this neurodegenerative disease was established a few years ago thanks to Joy Milne - Scotch, who has an incredibly sharp sense of smell. She noticed a change in the smell of her husband's body six years before he had any symptom of the disease.

Joy's skills were tested in the laboratory. She was given shirts worn by six people with the disease and six of the control group. Joey stated that seven out of 12 people had a special "musky smell", and was right, because one of the members of the control group diagnosed Parkinson's disease eight months later.

At present, researchers do not know which molecules are responsible for the specific smell detected by Milne. Skin secretions consist of more than 9,000 different molecules, so it is difficult for scientists to determine the specific. That's why they decided to use dogs.

What helps dogs identify smells

Dogs that are in the company of Medical Detection Dogs have been involved in cancer research for more than 10 years. In addition, there are more and more studies confirming the ability of dogs to identify certain diseases. Since about 30 percent of the dogs brain is used for odor analysis, they can identify them 40 times more efficiently than humans.

In addition, the nose of the dog contains 300 million olfactory receptors, compared with 5 million in humans. All this gives our furry friends incredible abilities when it comes to finding certain smells, even if they are elusive to the human nose.

A quick method of detecting Parkinson's disease with the help of a smell, scientists hope, will help make the diagnosis more rapid and accurate. Although Parkinsonism is still an incurable disease, but early diagnosis and the initiation of treatment in the first stages can alleviate the symptoms.