upworthy

breakthroughs

Health

Woman uses her super sense of smell to help scientists detect Parkinson's in minutes

Joy Milne first smelled the disease on her husband 10 years before his diagnosis.

There is currently no definitive test to detect Parkinson's.

We don’t always choose our gifts. Joy Milne’s superpower, one she inherited from her mother’s side of the family, was having a highly acute sense of smell.

Milne might have never used her olfactory talent as a force for good, had it not been for her late husband, Les Milne.

According to NPR, Les and Joy met in their teens and it was love at first sniff. "He had a lovely male musk smell. He really did," she told NPR.

After many years of a happy marriage, Joy noticed her husband, then in his 30s, had developed an “overpowering sort of nasty yeast smell.” The running joke-slash-complaint was that Les “wasn’t washing enough.”

Eventually Les’ scent wouldn’t be the only thing to change. Joy told NPR that her once funny, thoughtful husband completely transformed, becoming “moody,” irritable and even aggressive. He wouldn’t receive a proper Parkinson’s diagnosis until the age of 45.


Joy didn’t suspect that she could somehow detect the disease until going with Les to a Parkinson’s support group and noticing that the same distinctive smell seemed to fill the room. After sharing the discovery with her husband, she knew she had to take action.

Joy began working with researchers at University of Edinburgh and through a series of experiments confirmed that she could sniff out Parkinson’s with flawless accuracy. Now scientists have created a breakthrough method of detection based on Joy’s special ability.

parkinsons

This new test works in mere minutes.

Twitter

Under the belief that Parkinson’s affects a person’s odor due to a chemical change in sebum, or skin oil, doctors simply run a cotton ball along the back of the neck, then identify specific molecules linked to the neurological condition. The BBC reported that the skin-swab test is 95% accurate under laboratory conditions.

Though this medical advancement is still in its early stages, the discovery is promising. There is currently no definitive test to get a Parkinson’s diagnosis and, as Joy explained to Sky News, it is often not identified until patients have “over 50% of neuronal damage.”

Les died in 2015 at 65. An earlier diagnosis might have provided the opportunity to improve his lifestyle, which could possibly have offset symptoms. “It has been found that exercise and change of diet can make a phenomenal difference,” Joy told The Guardian.

She also recalled to BBC News that it would have meant having an explanation for the mood swings, not to mention traveling, spending more time with family … making the most out of what time was left. That perhaps is the biggest saving grace an early diagnosis could offer.

Les’ final wish before he passed was for Joy to continue using her gift, assuring that "it will make a difference." Joy is keeping that promise and currently extending her “super smeller” power to help smell other diseases like cancer and tuberculosis (TB).

While she notes that her superpower does make outings like shopping a “curse sometimes,” she also sees it as a “benefit” allowing her to help others.

If you're, say, researching a new drug or vaccine, this lab might be perfect.

Image via iStock.

But not everyone is lucky enough to have access to such resources. If you're not in a big city, for example, or if you're one of the world's many remote health care workers, in which case you might be going someplace where you can bring only what fits in your Jeep.


Which means that lab is just not coming along.

One of the tools we'd really like to make "back-of-Jeep" friendly is the centrifuge.

Centrifuges are one of the most common scientific tools and work by spinning samples at ridiculously high speeds. In medicine they're used to prep blood samples for analysis. Unfortunately, typical centrifuges are bulky, heavy, expensive, and electronic, which led designers to search for alternative solutions.

Designers often look for inspiration in everyday objects. Some have tried salad spinners as a centrifuge replacement. Others tried egg beaters. Both of those were too slow and awkward, but now researchers at Stanford might have found something awesome.

This simple toy is known as a whirligig.

Image from Nature/YouTube.

You may have played with one before, and if you haven't, they're dead simple to make. Researchers spotted it and were curious: Could this thing work as a centrifuge? It certainly spun, but how fast? The researchers decided to build their own prototype and test it out.

Using a high-speed camera and some seriously impressive physics calculations, they found that a whirligig could get up to a blisteringly fast 125,000 revolutions per minute. That's not just fast, that's centrifuge fast.

Since the first test, researchers have come up with a new whirligigdesign that could hold small amounts of blood or other scientific samples. They're calling it the "paperfuge" and are working with health care workers in Madagascar to learn how to improve and distribute it.

Image from Nature/YouTube.

Initial results seem good. They can get blood samples to separate in just 90 seconds. After 15 minutes, results were fine enough to even identify malaria parasites. This means the paperfuge might be able to bring a ton of new tests — from basic health checkups to serious diagnostics — to the millions of people who live outside the range of typical labs.

A lot of science is, unfortunately, out of reach for normal people. Clever design like this could remove some of the barriers.

Image from Nature/YouTube.

Creating more accessible equipment could help democratize science, says Dr. Manu Prakash, one of the researchers who worked on the paperfuge. There are a ton of smart, knowledgable people out there, but living in a place where you can easily get and use thousand-dollar centrifuges is a privilege many do not get.New tools like the paperfuge could change that.

Science is one of the best ways we have to learn about and change our world. Imagine what we can do once everyone has access to it.

Andy woke up with no sight and a tube down his throat.

On Sept. 28, 2011, an unknown person assaulted Andy. The attack knocked him unconscious, and when he woke up, he couldn't see anymore. The assault had damaged his optic nerve.

"I thought to myself, 'Hah. Whatever. You'll just open me up, reattach the wires and lights come back on again,'" recalls Andy. But that wasn't going to happen. "[The doctor] put his hand on my shoulder and said, 'I'm sorry, Andy.'"


Over time, Andy adjusted to losing his sight. But it wasn't easy.

More than 7 million American adults are blind or have a visual disability and it doesn't necessarily have to be a sad thing. But for Andy, losing his sight was difficult.

"The hardest thing for me being completely blind is not seeing my family every day," says Andy. "For me to learn to accept, 'You're never going to see again, Andy. You're never going to see your wife, your children, your dog.' Taken away in the blink of an eye. It's not fair."

But then the doctor said he might know something that could help.

There's a weird device out there called the BrainPort. It lets people see with their tongues. Yeah — their tongues. The device has three parts: a small camera, an iPhone-sized computer, and a weird half-spatula/half-lollipop-looking thing.

Using it is pretty simple: The camera and computer capture an image, then send it as a pattern of buzzes to the lollipop, which the person puts in their mouth (the buzzes apparently feel kind of like Pop Rocks candy.)

A buzzing lollipop sounds pretty weird, but it does seem to work.

Our brains are actually pretty good at figuring out how to use new information (it also helps that our tongues are incredibly sensitive, as anyone who's accidentally bitten theirs can tell you). It took a little while for Andy to get used to the buzzing sensation, but not that long.

"I felt this buzzing on my tongue, and I felt the impression. And then I saw my hand. For the first time in five years, I saw my hand," Andy explains. "Something that small is huge."

If certain studies are correct, Andy's brain could have processed the signals in his vision centers, as if the information was coming from his eyes themselves.

Seeing his hand must have been big. But not as big as seeing his family again.

"The first person was [my son] little Andy. He shook his hand back and forth and he said, 'Dad, you can see me?'" says Andy. You could see the emotion in his face. "He said, 'Hey, pop.'"

"It had been five years since I've seen my kids," Andy says. "It's incredible."

Watch Andy's story below:

Heroes

A 13-year-old girl invented a bandage to help wounds heal faster.

Parents and judges told her it was impossible, but she didn't listen.

True
UCLA

Anushka Naiknaware may only be 13 years old, but she just invented a bandage that could help patients with chronic wounds heal faster.

The eighth-grader from Portland, Oregon, created a bandage that senses moisture in a wound dressing. "A lot of people don't immediately relate moisture to wounds," she explained, "but the truth is that moisture is one of the key determining factors in how fast a chronic wound heals."

Naiknaware in front of a previous science fair presentation. All images via ​Rekha Naiknaware​, used with permission.


Why does moisture matter? Well, many open wounds need to be kept moist to promote healing; but if a wound is too wet, that can be a sign of infection. Simply put: Keeping the wound in a healthy moisture range helps it heal faster.

Naiknaware's bandage allows a doctor to monitor the status of the wound (without having to unwrap the dressing) and address issues accordingly. The bandage is intended to be used on patients with chronic wounds, which are common in elderly patients and folks with diabetes and usually take three months or longer to heal.

Ravleen Kaur from the Beaverton Valley Times reported that the bandage may even have implications for the military, "helping injured soldiers in a rapid and cost-effective manner."

Naiknaware's creation won the Lego Education Builder Award at the 2016 Google Science Fair. Heads up: That's a pretty big deal.

It's a prize that comes with $15,000, a trip to Denmark, and a one-year mentorship with Lego to help get the project into production.

Naiknaware after winning her award at the Google Science Fair.

The project all started when Naiknaware was 3 or 4 years old and her parents would take her to a local science museum. She loved all the exhibits there (particularly chemistry) and over the years her interest in science blossomed.

"There's a natural progression from one field to another," she said. "After you learn math and chemistry, you can do biology, physics, computer science, anything. It just keeps building and there’s no real end to it."

Naiknaware's love of the science museum fueled an interest in nanoparticles (which she began researching in fourth grade). Eventually, this research became the foundation of her submission to the Google Science Fair.

A budding scientist.

"I actually created an ink out of nanoparticles and filled that into a normal inkjet cartridge," Naiknaware explained. "This allowed me to print out a conductive circuit." After hooking that circuit up to a small battery and passing a current through it, she could measure the resistance and get a reading of the moisture content.

The success of Naiknaware's invention is huge. But throughout her process, she was no stranger to failure.

She had particular difficulty perfecting the ink circuit. "How many times did my ink fail? 40 times? 50 times? Quite a few." She also mentioned a few jammed up printers in the garage.

Naiknaware's wound dressing presentation.

On top of that, Naiknaware encountered her fair share of discouragement from adults. "When I started doing things with nanoparticles," she recalled, "a lot of people — parents, judges — told me, 'What you're doing is impossible. It's not going to work.'"

But she knew that her theory worked on paper. She had confidence in her own idea and a few encouraging mentors on her side — including her sixth grade science teacher, Ms. Svenson.

After her experience with the bandage, Naiknaware's advice to other passionate kids interested in science is simple: "Just because people say your idea won't work, doesn't mean you can't prove them wrong."