A Scottish woman with a remarkable ability to smell Parkinson’s disease has shared how she noticed a change in her husband’s scent more than a decade before his official diagnosis. Joy Milne, from Perth, has an incredibly rare hyper-sensitive sense of smell, earning her the nickname “the woman who can smell Parkinson’s”. It was this unique ability that alerted her to something being wrong with her late husband, Les, long before doctors confirmed it.
Joy and Les had been together since they were 16, meaning she knew his scent better than anyone. They married after college, started a family, and both pursued medical careers—Les as a doctor and Joy as a nurse. But something changed when he reached his early 30s, reported the Express.
She noticed an odd, musty smell clinging to him, particularly around his shoulders and the back of his neck. At first, she assumed it was something he had picked up from the hospital where he worked. She told him to shower more often, but the strange scent wouldn’t go away. Over time, it only grew stronger.
Joy started nagging, convinced that Les wasn’t washing properly. But no matter how many times she told him, the smell lingered. Les became frustrated, insisting that he couldn’t smell anything different—and neither could anyone else.
Twelve years later, at just 45 years old, Les was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. He battled the condition for two decades before passing away in 2015 at the age of 65.
It wasn’t until the couple attended a Parkinson’s support group that Joy made a startling realisation. As soon as she walked into the room, she was hit by the same distinct smell that had clung to Les for years. That was when she knew—her sense of smell had picked up on his illness long before doctors had.
Determined to use her ability to help others, Joy began working with scientists to explore how scent could be used for early detection. “Les and I should have been enjoying retirement, but Parkinson’s had stolen our lives,” she said. “We became determined that others wouldn’t suffer the same way.”
Before he died, Les made Joy promise that she would continue their work. And she did. She spent years in labs, sniffing T-shirts and skin swabs from people with and without the disease. The results were astonishing—Joy could detect Parkinson’s with 95% accuracy.
Now, after working closely with researchers in Manchester, her ability has helped develop a groundbreaking new test that can detect Parkinson’s in just three minutes. A discovery that could change lives forever.
