Scottish Woman Who Can Smell Parkinson’s Disease Reveals the Scent She Noticed on Her Husband

A woman with an incredibly rare ability to detect Parkinson’s disease through smell has shared what she noticed on her husband long before his diagnosis.

Joy Milne is something of a medical anomaly. She had been with her husband, Les, since she was just 16 years old. After spending decades together, she had become deeply familiar with his natural scent.

But one day, Joy picked up on something different—a distinct, musky odor that she had never noticed before.

Science has already established that a person's scent naturally changes with age. This is largely due to the increased presence of 2-nonenal, a compound found in the human body that becomes more prominent over time.

However, what Joy was noticing on Les wasn’t simply a result of aging. It was something deeper—something tied to his health.

Much like how some dogs can be trained to detect cancer or warn their owners of an impending seizure, Joy has an extraordinary ability to detect Parkinson’s disease simply by scent.

Joy Milne has the unique ability to smell people's Parkinson's disease BBC

Around the time of Les' 32nd birthday, Joy began noticing this unusual change in his smell.

She recalled the moment in an interview with The Guardian: "In 1982, before Les's 32nd birthday, I noticed a musky, dank odour on him – he knew about my heightened sense of smell. I thought it might be the unprocessed air of the operating theatres he worked in and told him to shower more. That caused arguments."

It wasn’t until 12 years later that Les was officially diagnosed with Parkinson’s—a disease that also affects actor Michael J. Fox.

Joy's husband Les died in 2015 at the age of 65 BBC

At first, Joy and Les didn’t make the connection between her heightened sense of smell and his condition. But over time, they realized that her ability wasn’t limited to just him.

While attending a Parkinson’s support group, Joy was overwhelmed by the same distinct odor she had smelled on Les all those years ago.

That moment changed everything. She realized that what she had experienced wasn’t just a coincidence—it was a real, measurable ability. Determined to put it to good use, she started working with scientists to explore how her sense of smell could help detect Parkinson’s disease at an early stage.

"Les and I should have been enjoying retirement, but Parkinson's had stolen our lives," said Joy.

"We became determined that others wouldn't suffer the same way. When Les died in June 2015, he made me promise I'd carry on. I spent time in labs, smelling sufferers' T-shirts and swabs for sebum – the skin oil we all produce, which changes with the onset of Parkinson's."

"I could detect whether the person had the disease with 95% accuracy. I was surprised."

In recent years, Joy has been working closely with researchers at the University of Manchester in the UK. Her efforts even earned her recognition in a scientific paper published in the journal ACS Central Science.

According to studies she contributed to, scientists discovered that Parkinson’s patients tend to have higher-than-normal levels of certain compounds on their skin, including hippuric acid, eicosane, and octadecanal, as reported by BBC News.