• Posted July 22, 2025

Dogs Can Sniff Out Parkinson's Disease, Study Shows

Dogs’ noses are sensitive enough to track down fleeing convicts, locate human remains in hidden burial sites and detect illicit drug stashes.

They’ve even been able to sniff out human diseases like prostate cancer, malaria and COVID-19.

But are they keen enough to detect diseases of the brain and nervous system?

Apparently so, as a pair of canines have been trained to detect Parkinson’s disease through their sense of smell alone.

When presented skin swabs, the dogs were up to 80% effective in accurately detecting people with confirmed Parkinson’s, researchers report in the Journal of Parkinson’s Disease.

The dogs also were up to 98% accurate in ruling out those who didn’t have Parkinson’s, the study says.

The pups even detected Parkinson’s in patients who also had other health problems, researchers say.

“I believe that dogs could help us to develop a quick non-invasive and cost-effective method to identify patients with Parkinson’s disease,” lead researcher Nicola Rooney, an associate professor at the University of Bristol Veterinary School in the U.K., said in a news release.

Parkinson’s disease is a progressive movement disorder that causes people to shake, become stiff or have trouble with their balance and coordination. 

It occurs when the brain cells that create the brain chemical dopamine die or become impaired, according to the National Institute on Aging.

One early sign of Parkinson’s is excessive sebum excreted by the skin’s sebaceous glands, making patients’ skin excessively waxy or oily, researchers said in background notes.

Researchers figured the distinctive odor that emanates from too much sebum could give dogs a way of detecting the neurological disease.  

For the study, researchers started training five different dogs to detect the scent of Parkinson’s disease using skin swabs.

Three of the five dogs washed out, leaving a 2-year-old Golden Retriever named Bumper and a 3-year-old Black Lab named Peanut to train for weeks on more than 200 samples from Parkinson’s patients and healthy individuals.

Samples were presented to the dogs during training, and the pooches were rewarded each time they correctly indicated a Parkinson’s sample or correctly ignored a healthy sample.

In double-blind testing, in which only a computer knew which samples came from Parkinson’s patients, the dogs achieved high levels of accuracy in sussing out the degenerative nerve disease.

“We are extremely proud to say that once again, dogs can very accurately detect disease,” senior researcher Claire Guest, CEO and chief scientific officer of the U.K. charity Medical Detection Dogs, said in a news release.

“There is currently no early test for Parkinson’s disease and symptoms may start up to 20 years before they become visible and persistent leading to a confirmed diagnosis,” Guest said. “Timely diagnosis is key as subsequent treatment could slow down the progression of the disease and reduce the intensity of symptoms.”

More information

The National Institute on Aging has more about Parkinson’s disease.

SOURCE: University of Bristol, news release, July 14, 2025