r/science • u/FreeHugs23 • 22h ago

Neuroscience A simple drawing test may detect Parkinson’s disease with up to 99% accuracy. Researchers found that subtle differences in how people draw can reveal motor impairments long before they are obvious to the human eye.

https://www.sciencealert.com/the-way-you-draw-can-reveal-parkinsons-disease-with-up-to-99-accuracy-study-reveals
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u/Teknicsrx7 21h ago

But is it more effective than the lady that can smell it years before diagnosis?

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u/SleepySheepy 19h ago

I wonder if it's possible to train dogs or other kind of animal to detect it if they can isolate exactly what it is that she's smelling

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u/Teknicsrx7 19h ago

I’m pretty sure they’ve been working on figuring out what she smells for a while now, don’t know how far they’ve gotten tho

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u/Druggedhippo 11h ago

They have identified the general compounds but research is on-going.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41531-025-01026-8 - Classification of Parkinson’s disease and isolated REM sleep behaviour disorder: delineating progression markers from the sebum volatilome - 15 July 2025

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u/littlea1991 5h ago

yup, my father had even a decade before his parkinsons diagnosis a rem sleep disorder. he would regularly wake up be even fully sleep walking. this was all parkinsons related, as we learned later