Dogs trained to detect Parkinson’s disease using scent have shown remarkable accuracy in new research. In a double-blind trial, they identified skin swabs from people with Parkinson’s with up to 80% sensitivity and 98% specificity, even when other health conditions were present. The findings offer hope for a simple, non-invasive diagnostic method using biomarkers that appear long before traditional symptoms, potentially allowing earlier treatment and slowed disease progression.
  • shplane@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    6 hours ago

    I wonder if there have been studies on the benefits of pretreating Parkinson’s before you have a full blown condition. Otherwise, these dogs would give you the bad news and it’s just “enjoy dreading the day the disease finally hits ya”

  • MysteriousSophon21@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    9 hours ago

    Dogs can detect certain biomarkers in sebum (skin oils) that change with Parkinson’s, but these headlines always exagerate the results.

  • AmidFuror@fedia.io
    55·
    1 day ago

    The study did not present the dogs with samples from “years before” and did not have an accuracy of 98%. It had a sensitivity (percent of positive samples called positive) of 70% for one dog and 80% for the other. Their specificity (percent of negative samples called negative) was 90% and 98%.

    Since there were 60 positive samples and 40 negative samples, their accuracies were 82% and 91%, respectively.

    Not 98%. And with samples from patients currently diagnosed (or controls).