Some survivors suffer from loss of odor and taste-Technology News, Firstpost

New York TimesJanuary 5, 2021 10:13:36 AM

Until March, when everything began to taste like cardboard, Catherine Hansen had a very sharp smell, so she could recreate the food of almost every restaurant in her home without a recipe, just by remembering the aroma and taste. Then the coronavirus arrived. One of Hansen’s first symptoms was a loss of odor and a loss of taste. Hansen says he still can’t taste the food and even chewing it is unacceptable. Currently she lives mainly on soups and shakes.

“I’m like an adult who loses sight,” said Hansen, a real estate agent living in the suburbs of Seattle. “They know what something should look like. I know what it tastes like, but it’s hard to go.”

Healthcare professionals will take a male nasal swab sample to test COVID-19 in Ahmedabad, India, on Monday, January 4, 2021. India approved two COVID-19 vaccines on Sunday, paving the way for blocking large-scale vaccination programs. Coronavirus epidemic in the second most populous country in the world. Image Credit: AP Photo / Ajit Solanki

Decreased sense of smell, called anosmia, manifests itself as one of the overt symptoms of COVID-19, a disease caused by the coronavirus. This is the first and sometimes the only symptom for some patients. Anosmia, often accompanied by a lack of taste, suddenly and dramatically occurs in these patients as if they were switched on.

Most people regain their sense of smell and taste, usually within a few weeks of recovery. However, in a few patients like Hansen, the loss continues and doctors cannot tell when or if the sensation will return.

Scientists know very little about how the virus causes persistent anosmia or how to treat it. However, as the coronavirus swept the globe, cases piled up, and some experts fear that a pandemic could permanently cause a huge number of people to lose their odor and taste. Prospects have launched an urgent battle between researchers to learn more about why patients are losing these essential sensations and how to help them.

“Many people have been doing olfactory research for decades and have received little attention,” said Dr. Dolores Maraspina, a professor of psychiatry, neuroscience, genetics, and genomics at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. It states. “COVID is just turning the field upside down.”

Smell is closely related to both taste and appetite, and anosmia often deprives people of the joy of eating. However, sudden absences can have a significant impact on mood and quality of life.

Studies have linked anosmia to social isolation and anhedonia, inability to feel joy, and strange separation and isolation. Dr. Sandeep Robert Datta, an associate professor of neurobiology at Harvard Medical School, said that memory and emotion are intricately linked to odor, and the olfactory system is important in emotional well-being but is barely recognized. He said he was playing a role.

“You consider it an aesthetic bonus sense,” said Datta. “But when someone is denied the sense of smell, it changes the way they perceive the environment and their position in the environment. People’s well-being diminishes. It can be really unpleasant and embarrassing. “

Many patients explain that they can be very upset and even debilitating, as they are invisible to others.

“Smell isn’t something we pay much attention to until it’s gone,” said Pamela Dalton, who studies the relationship between olfaction and cognition and emotion at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. “Then people notice it, and it’s pretty painful. Nothing is exactly the same.”

British scientists studied the experience of 9,000 COVID-19 patients who joined the Facebook support group established by the charity AbScent between March 24th and September 30th. Many members said they lost not only their food but also the joy of socializing. Loss weakened ties with others, affected intimate relationships, isolated them, and even made them feel separated from reality.

“I feel foreign to myself,” the participants wrote. “It’s also a kind of loneliness in the world. It seems that part of me is missing because I can no longer sniff and experience the emotions of everyday basic life.”

Another said, “I feel confused — I don’t exist. I smell the house and I can’t feel like I’m at home. The smell of fresh air and grass when I’m out. It doesn’t smell. It doesn’t smell like rain. “

The widespread effects of anosmia plague mental health professionals, as odor loss is a risk factor for anxiety and depression. Maraspina and other researchers have found that olfactory dysfunction often precedes social deficiencies in schizophrenia, and even healthy individuals withdrawal.

“This is really important from a public health standpoint,” Datta said. “Given the number of people infected with COVID worldwide, we are talking about potentially millions of people, even if only 10% have a longer-term olfactory loss. It is. “

The most direct effect may be nutritional. People with anosmia may continue to perceive basic tastes such as salty, sour, sweet, bitter, and umami. However, taste buds are relatively crude leaders. Smell adds complexity to flavor perception through hundreds of scent receptors that signal the brain.

Many people who cannot smell lose their appetite and are at risk of undernourishment and unintentional weight loss. Kara Van Guilder, who lives in Brookline, Massachusetts, said she had lost £ 20 since her sense of smell disappeared in March.

“I call it the COVID diet,” said Van Guilder, 26, who works in health management. “If you really can’t taste brownies, there’s no point in indulging in brownies.”

But while she was joking about it, she added, “Almost every day for months, I cried at the end of the day.”

Smell also acts as the primary warning system to warn humans of environmental hazards such as fires and gas leaks. Deterioration of the elderly’s sense of smell is one of the reasons why elderly people are more likely to have an accident, such as a fire caused by leaving burning food on the stove.

Michelle Miller, who lives in New York’s Bayside, was infected with the coronavirus in March and hasn’t smelled anything since. Recently, her husband and daughter kicked her out of the house, saying that the kitchen was filled with gas.

She didn’t know. “There is one thing that doesn’t smell or taste, but it’s a survivor,” Miller said.

According to Dalton of the Monel Center for Chemistry, humans constantly scan the environment for odors that indicate change or potential harm, but the process is not always conscious.

Smell warns the brain of mundane things like dirty clothes and dangerous things like spoiled food. Without such detection, “people feel uneasy about things,” Dalton said.

To make matters worse, some COVID-19 survivors suffer from unpleasant and often harmful illusory odors, such as the smell of burning plastic, ammonia, or feces, and a distortion called parosmia.

Eric Reynolds, a 51-year-old conservation observer living in Santa Maria, California, lost his sense of smell when infected with COVID-19 in April. Now he said he often perceives the stench of knowing that he doesn’t exist. Diet drinks taste like dirt. Soap and laundry detergent smell like stagnant water or ammonia.

“I can’t cook, it makes me gag,” Reynolds said. He also suffers from the illusory scent of corn chips and the scent he calls “the scent of old lady’s perfume.”

Dr. Evan R. Reiter, Medical Director of the Virginia Commonwealth University Olfaction and Taste Center, is tracking the recovery of approximately 2,000 COVID-19 patients and is associated with distorted perceptions in patients like Reynolds. It is not uncommon to develop food aversion. A person who has lost his sense of smell.

One of his patients is recovering, but “she says that everything she eats or virtually everything gives her the taste or smell of gasoline because it’s back,” Reiter said. .. He said olfactory disruption may be part of the recovery process, as nasal receptors struggle to wake up again and signal the brain to misfire or misread.

After the loss of smell, “the signals that the brain is accustomed to getting when eating steak are distorted because different populations or subtypes of receptors can be affected to varying degrees. Eating a dog’s poop can trick your brain into thinking something else that doesn’t taste, “said Reiter.

Patients who were anxious for answers and treatments tried treatments such as olfactory training. I try to soften the scent by smelling various scented essential oils and sachets such as lavender, eucalyptus, cinnamon and chocolate. A recent study of 153 patients in Germany found that training may be of moderate help to people with poor olfactory function and parosmia.

Dr. Alfred Iloreta, an otolaryngologist at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, has begun a clinical trial to see if fish oil intake helps restore olfaction. He suggested that the omega-3 fatty acids in fish oil may protect nerve cells from further damage and help regenerate nerve growth.

“If you don’t smell or taste, you have a hard time eating something. It’s a big quality of life issue,” says Iloreta. “My patients, and those who have lost the scent I know, are completely destroyed by it.”

Reynolds finds the loss most serious when he walks to the beach near his home. He no longer smells of the sea or saltiness.

“My heart knows how it smells,” he said. “And when I got there, it wasn’t there.”

Roni Carin Rabin c.2021 The New York Times Company