MAIL ONLINE: The wife who diagnosed her husband’s Parkinson’s by smell: Now she's using her extraordinary gift to help doctors find a cure

Description

Since Les’s death, Joy has been able to use her keen nose to assist Professor Perdita Barran, head of mass spectrometry at the University of Manchester, in identifying the ten molecules that trigger the disease. Together they were able to isolate these molecules in skin swabs taken from sufferers.

So what is so special about Joy’s olfactory abilities? ‘Perdita said the strength of my sense of smell falls somewhere between a human and a dog,’ she says, laughing at the memory.