This 'E-Nose' May Help Snuff Out Parkinson’s Disease
Nearly 10 million people worldwide—a million of whom reside in the U.S.—live with Parkinson’s disease, best known for robbing most patients of their ability to move and, for some, a decline in thinking and reasoning associated with dementia.
While Parkinson’s is incurable, some of its worst symptoms can be relieved and controlled using medications that increase a patient’s levels of dopamine, a vital neurochemical that plummets due to destruction of neurons in the brain that make it. A major obstacle to getting effective treatment at the right time is identifying the disease soon enough, before patients experience the symptoms brought on by irreversible neuron loss.
But scientists might have just the thing to turn the diagnostic tide. And it involves a nose.
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