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BackgroundHyposmia is an early feature in neurodegenerative diseases, most notably Parkinson’s Disease (PD). Using abbreviated smell tests could provide a cost-effective means for large-scale hyposmia screening. It is unclear whether short smell tests can effectively detect hyposmia in patient populations.ObjectivesTo test the ability of short smell combinations to ‘pre-screen’ for probable hyposmia in people with PD and target administration of more extensive tests, such as the University of Pennsylvania Smell Identification Test (UPSIT).MethodsWe assessed the screening performance of a short 4 smell combination previously derived from use of the 40-item UPSIT in healthy older people and its ability to detect hyposmia in a large cohort of PD patients.ResultsThe novel 4 smell combination included Menthol, Clove, Onion and Orange and had a sensitiv- ity of 87.1% (95% confidence interval: 84.9%-89.2%) and specificity of 69.7% (63.3%-75.5%) for detecting hyposmia in patients with PD. A different (also novel) 4-item combination developed using a data-driven approach in PD patients only achieved 81.3% (78.2%-84.4%) sensitivity for equivalent specificity.ConclusionsA short 4 smell combination derived from a healthy population demonstrated high sensitivity to detect those with hyposmia and PD.s.auger@outlook.com