Smell Test to Predict Parkinson’s Disease

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Imagine going to the doctors office for your annual check-up. You get the usual of weighing in, measuring your blood pressure, calculating your heart rate and then measuring your smell to see if you may have Parkinson’s disease… Doctors and researchers have known for quite a while that an impaired sense of smell may be an early indicator of Parkinson’s disease. Doctor Kapil Sethi is conducting a smell test for people who’s parents or siblings have had Parkinson’s disease.

Presently Parkinson’s disease is diagnosed through motor symptoms like tremors, stiffness, and slowness in order to diagnose it. Which, by that point 50 to 60% of dopaminergic cells have been lost. Dopamine cells are key to movement control. The smell test is being tested to see if there is a way to diagnose Parkinson’s disease at a much earlier stage so that Parkinson’s disease can possibly be stopped earlier.

Doctor Kapil Sethi, director of the Movement Disorders Program at the Medical College of Georgia and a lead investigator for the Parkinson’s Associated Risk Syndrome Study, is leading the study. The study is being conducted at 17 sites across the country. The study is trying to recruit15,00 close relatives of Parkinson’s patients.

Science Daily reports on some of the details of the study, “Patients will be given the University of Pennsylvania’s Smell Identification Test, which tests for 40 common odors and has been used to detect the first signs of neurodegenerative disorders.

People with a normal sense of smell who take the test can usually identify around 35 odors correctly. Parkinson’s patients typically can only identify 20 or less.

The study will also help determine if the smell test can also predict who will get Parkinson’s. ‘We believe that if you’re a person who is going to develop Parkinson’s, you’ll also score lower than others,’ Dr. Sethi says.”

The study is open to those 50 or older who do not have Parkinson’s but have a mother, father, child or sibling with the disease. For more information, call the MCG Movement Disorders Program at 706-721-2798 or the Institute for Neurodegenerative Disorders 877-401-4300.