The woman who smelled Parkinson’s

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Editor's note: Do you know that the human body consists of tens of trillions of human and microbial cells? These cells make numerous chemical compounds. Some of these are compounds that can be volatilized to release distinct odours. Ever wonder how you recognize someone you know well just by their smell? You, me and every other person on this planet has a distinctive odour fingerprint, a combination of over a thousand volatile organic compounds continuously released. This gives a unique smell to exhaled breath, skin secretions found in sweat and sebum, and urine. This odour can change with health, diet, medication and smoking, but it doesn’t just wash off with bathing. Now, imagine having a rare superpower that no one knows about, which allows you to smell signs of a serious disease in someone you loved dearly before doctors can detect it. Imagine standing up in the middle of a scientific conference and asking a leading expert on the disease why no one had picked up on its scent, leaving the expert flabbergasted. One woman from Scotland didn’t need to imagine this …