Our four-legged quacks smell Parkinson’s with almost 90% accuracy

That our four-legged friends assist us in so many ways is a given. From their wonderful work as assistance dogs, through to getting straight down to the business of sniffing out drugs while a mere human tasked with such may be left faffing about for an eternity.

People suffering from Parkinson’s have hundreds of unique chemicals in their skin. After training, dogs have been found to be excellent identifiers of odorants relating to Parkinson’s. This offers a new approach to the (early) diagnosis of the condition.  Our canine companions picked up on the scents in persons with the illness and persons without who were wearing a T-shirt previously worn by a sufferer.

As an aside, the slang term “quack” comes from the 17th century Dutch word “quacksalver”, or a person purveying medicines.  But with many of these “miracle cures” being fake the term also evolved to become a reference to a crook.