The speaker for this meeting will be Professor Monty Silverdale, who is a consultant Neurologist at the Manchester Centre for Clinical Neurosciences and a Professor of Neurology at the University of Manchester.

This is Professor Silverdale’s summary of his talk:

“Joy Milne, a ‘super-smeller’ from Edinburgh, noticed an unusual musky smell on her husband Les, 12 years before he developed Parkinson’s disease (PD). This chance finding suggested that skin chemicals may be altered in PD. We performed a large study analysing the chemicals on skin swabs from Parkinson’s disease and control participants across the UK. Our results demonstrate altered skin chemicals in PD which we are now using to develop a simple skin swab test.

I will tell the amazing story of Joy and how her nose may lead to improved treatments in PD.”