Could your ear wax tell you if you have Parkinson’s disease?
Some 90,000 people are diagnosed with the degenerative neurological condition in the U.S. each year, and annual deaths have surged in recent decades to tens of thousands.
Now, researchers at the American Chemical Society claim they have developed a new system that could help catch the disease at an early stage.
The identifier is in the odor of ear wax’s main ingredient, known as sebum. The oily substance is produced by the body to lubricate and protect the skin. Sebum from people with Parkinson’s may have a characteristic and musky smell because the volatile organic compounds released by sebum are altered by disease progression. This association has been identified in previous research.
To identify the compounds released by sebum in people with the disease, the researchers swabbed the ear canals of 209 participants, more than half of which were diagnosed with the condition. Then, they analyzed what was collected using gas chromatography and mass spectrometry techniques.
Four of the volatile organic compounds they found in people with Parkinson’s were different than people without it. Those include ethylbenzene, 4-ethyltoluene, pentanal, and 2-pentadecyl-1,3-dioxolane. The researchers said they are potential biomarkers for Parkinson’s.
Using these findings, published this week in the journal Analytical Chemistry, they were able to develop a system that inexpensively screens for Parkinson’s.
They trained an artificial intelligence olfactory system - a robotic model that can mimic how we smell - with their ear wax compound data. Using the model, they found it was able to categorize samples with and without Parkinson’s with 94 percent accuracy.
Some 1.1 million Americans are living with Parkinson’s right now. Because most treatments for Parkinson’s only slow the progression of disease, catching it early is critical. Current testing is also costly, and can be subjective.
This AI system, the researchers say, could be used as a first-line screening tool for early detection.
“This method is a small-scale single-center experiment in China,” explained author Hao Dong. “The next step is to conduct further research at different stages of the disease, in multiple research centers and among multiple ethnic groups, in order to determine whether this method has greater practical application value.”
