this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2025
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[–] shplane@lemmy.world 2 points 3 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.world 2 points 6 hours ago

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

[–] altphoto@lemmy.today 3 points 8 hours ago

And they won't tell you unless you train them.

[–] AmidFuror@fedia.io 56 points 21 hours 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).

[–] errer@lemmy.world 30 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

What’s the false pawsitive rate?

[–] WhyIHateTheInternet@lemmy.world 21 points 23 hours ago (1 children)
[–] 69420@lemmy.world 15 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

You're thinking of Barkinson's disease.

[–] LuxSpark@lemmy.cafe 9 points 21 hours ago (1 children)
[–] prex@aussie.zone 3 points 17 hours ago

I heard that they were through the woof.

[–] MedicPigBabySaver@lemmy.world 1 points 21 hours ago