SCIENCE: New discovery enables diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease with a cotton swab in just 3 minutes

Ear­ly and accu­rate diag­no­sis of symp­toms makes a big dif­fer­ence when devel­op­ing a cure or a defin­i­tive cure for a dis­ease. Sci­en­tists have now devel­oped a method to quick­ly and reli­ably iden­ti­fy peo­ple with Parkin­son’s disease.

After the skin is col­lect­ed, the test can be per­formed in as lit­tle as 3 min­utes. The swab ana­lyzes changes in the chem­i­cal mix­ture of sebum (a nat­ur­al waxy oil secret­ed by the skin that was pre­vi­ous­ly linked to Parkin­son’s disease).

A spe­cial­ist diag­noses Parkin­son’s dis­ease based on symp­toms, a med­ical his­to­ry, the results of a lengthy phys­i­cal exam­i­na­tion, and some­times a brain scan.

“This test has the poten­tial to great­ly improve the diag­no­sis and treat­ment of peo­ple with Parkin­son’s dis­ease,” says neu­rol­o­gist Mon­ty Sil­verdale of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­ches­ter, UK.

The new test is based on research done by Joy Milne, a Scot­tish woman who suf­fers from hered­i­tary hyper­smia, and her researchers.

Years before her hus­band was for­mal­ly diag­nosed with Parkin­son’s dis­ease, Milne, who noticed she began to smell like musk, says she can sniff out signs of ill­ness in peo­ple. I dis­cov­ered that it can be done.

There­fore, the research team focused on “sebum,” which is relat­ed to the endocrine sys­tem and keeps the skin moist. Back in 2019, some of the same researchers iden­ti­fied how the chem­i­cal mix of sebum changes in indi­vid­u­als as they devel­op Parkin­son’s disease.

It is now pos­si­ble to con­duct tests based on changes in these bio­mark­ers. A cot­ton swab col­lect­ed at the clin­ic is sent to the lab, where the mol­e­c­u­lar com­po­si­tion can be viewed by mass spec­trom­e­try. The cur­rent study com­pared a sam­ple of 79 Parkin­son’s patients with a sam­ple of 71 non-Parkin­son’s patients.

“Then we find more than 4,000 com­pounds, 500 of which are dif­fer­ent in Parkin­son’s patients and con­trols,” says Depan­jan Sarkar, a chemist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Manchester.

The fact that the test is non-inva­sive and results are very fast is a pos­i­tive sign. But sci­en­tists have yet to demon­strate that the method can be scaled up to work in non-lab­o­ra­to­ry settings.

Going fur­ther, he says, oth­er dis­eases and con­di­tions may also be diag­nosed by sebum analy­sis. How­ev­er, it is not yet ful­ly under­stood why the onset of Parkin­son’s dis­ease caus­es these changes in flu­id secretion.

Parkin­son’s dis­ease is cur­rent­ly the fastest grow­ing neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­ease and is expect­ed to con­tin­ue to do so. Sci­en­tists are work­ing hard to find a cure, but there are ways to slow or man­age the dis­ease. There­fore, ear­ly diag­no­sis is very important.

“We are very pleased with these results as they move us clos­er to cre­at­ing a diag­nos­tic test for Parkin­son’s dis­ease that can be used clin­i­cal­ly,” said Perdi­ta Bar­ran, a chemist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Manchester.