Dog's Keen Sense of Smell Detects Parkinson's Disease with 80% Accuracy, Enabling Early Diagnosis

Non-patients Filtered with 98% Accuracy
Early Diagnosis Offers Hope for Early Intervention

A new study has found that Parkinson's disease, which is known to lack an accurate early diagnostic method, can be detected early using a dog's sense of smell.

Golden Retriever 'Bumper' and Black Labrador Retriever 'Peanut' trained with Parkinson's disease patient samples. University of Bristol

On July 25 (local time), Fox News in the United States reported that researchers from the University of Bristol and the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom successfully identified Parkinson's disease patients with 80% sensitivity after training two retrievers with more than 200 samples. The paper containing these findings was published on July 15 in the scientific journal "The Journal of Parkinson's Disease" (JPD).

The researchers believed that dogs' exceptional sense of smell could also detect Parkinson's disease at an early stage. Parkinson's disease is a degenerative brain disorder in which dopamine, a neurotransmitter essential for movement, gradually decreases. As dopamine levels decline, the body's autonomic nervous system functions, such as regulating body temperature and blood pressure, deteriorate, leading to an increase in sebum compared to non-patients. Utilizing this difference, the researchers had two dogs?a Golden Retriever named Bumper and a Black Labrador Retriever named Peanut?smell skin secretion samples from people with and without Parkinson's disease. There were a total of 205 sebum samples. After 53 weeks of continuous training, the dogs were able to identify individuals with Parkinson's disease with a probability of 70-80%. In the "specificity test," which screens out people without the disease, the dogs demonstrated an accuracy rate of up to 98.3%. This means that nearly all non-patients could be correctly identified.

Golden Retriever 'Bumper' trained using samples from Parkinson's disease patients. University of Bristol

Nicola Rooney, professor at the University of Bristol School of Veterinary Science, who led the study, explained, "The sensitivity of 70-80% confirmed in this study is too high to be considered a coincidence," adding, "We believe that dogs can help develop a fast, non-invasive, and cost-effective method for identifying Parkinson's disease patients. This means we now have a key to diagnosing Parkinson's disease using only smell."

Claire Guest, chief scientific officer at Medical Detection Dogs in the United Kingdom, who participated in the study, added, "It is extremely important to detect the disease in a timely manner in order to slow its progression and reduce the severity of symptoms," and "We have confirmed that dogs can detect the disease 'very accurately'." This suggests that if Parkinson's disease can be diagnosed early through a dog's sense of smell, many patients may be able to slow the progression of the disease.

Black Labrador Retriever 'Peanut' trained using samples from Parkinson's disease patients. University of Bristol

Parkinson's disease is typically only discovered after symptoms appear, as there is no clear method for early diagnosis. In severe cases, the disease has been detected as late as 20 years after its onset. As a result, most patients miss the "treatment golden time." According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are more than 6 million Parkinson's disease patients worldwide, and this number is expected to exceed 10 million within a few years. In Korea as well, the number of Parkinson's disease patients is increasing due to an aging population.