25-09 - Flipbook - Page 134
Mi n i str i es
What body odour reveals about your health
We emit a barrage of whiffy chemicals through our pores and in our breath. Some are a
sign that we might be getting ill 3 and could be used to diagnose diseases up to years in
advance.
It was obviously nonsense. That was how analytical chemist Perdita Barran reacted when a
colleague told her about a Scottish woman who claimed she could smell Parkinson's disease.
"She's probably just smelling old people and recognising symptoms of Parkinson's and making some association," Barran remembers thinking. The woman, a 74-year-old retired nurse
called Joy Milne, had approached Barran's colleague Tilo Kunath, a neuroscientist at the
University Edinburgh, at an event he was speaking at in 2012.
Milne told Kunath that she had first discovered her ability after noticing her husband, Les,
had developed a new musky odour years earlier. He was later diagnosed with Parkinson's
disease, a progressive neurodegenerative illness characterised by tremors and other motor
symptoms. It was only when Milne attended a group meeting for Parkinson's patients in her
home town of Perth, Scotland, that she made the connection: all the patients had the
same musky smell.
"So, we then decided to test whether she was right," says Barran, who worked at the Univer-
Jasmin Fox-Skelly
