If it can be repeated, I think this is an important finding. Depending on the direction of causality (Parkinson's causes something to happen that produces the distinctive smell, or something with this smell happens that causes PD):
- it provides a useful diagnostic tool for PD (though I can't answer Nigel's question on whether it will be specific enough to differentiate between the sub-types of Parkinsonism);
- it gives a lead as to the aetiology of PD.

My wife has since before I was diagnosed with PD described me as having a fungal smell. (I am unable to confirm this because, as happens to many PwP, I lost much of my sense of smell some years before being diagnosed. It is, perhaps, ironic, that the thing that would have detected the disease is taken away from us by the disease.)

To add to the case, it is interesting that this result is published so recently after the paper implicating fungi in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's.

The experiment used to determine the Scottish lady's abilities would be very easy to duplicate. One day is all that is needed.

John