New technology being developed in America analyses tremors, breathiness and other weaknesses in people's voices which are believed to be one of the condition's earliest symptoms.

Experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology claim that their computer programme can pick out Parkinson's sufferers with 99 per cent accuracy simply by analysing their speech.

Dr Max Little, a British researcher who is leading the initiative at MIT, now hopes to determine whether the same results could be produced from a patient speaking over the telephone.

By recruiting Parkinson's patients and health volunteers to take part in a three-minute telephone call where they will say "ah", speak some sentences and answer a few questions, he said the system could be programmed to diagnose people remotely, allowing earlier treatment.

He said: "Science tells us voice impairment might be an early sign of Parkinson's. It sounds counterintuitive as Parkinson's is a movement disorder but the voice is a form of movement.

"Neurologists look at changes in the ability to move, which is done with the limbs, but we are looking in the vocal organs the sounds that come out of the mouth. We are fairly confident we can detect the disease over the telephone."

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Parkinson's could be detected by telephone call