A new study shows that the chance of smell loss from the latest omicron variants is as low compared to the start of of the pandemic.
The findings, published in the journal Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery, mean that losing smell and, by association, your sense of taste is no longer a reliable sign that someone has a Covid infection, Reiter said.
Doctors have had difficulty explaining the cause of smell loss, but some research suggests it is due to Covid triggering a prolonged immune assault on olfactory nerve cells. These cells sit at the top of the nasal cavity and help send smell signals from the nose to the brain. Despite the dramatic decline, Reiter said he still sees patients who have either completely lost or have a distorted sense of smell, which takes a significant toll on their quality of life.
“People can force themselves to keep up their calories if what they’re eating is just very bland and they don’t get any taste,” Reiter said. “But if it’s a really kind of a repulsive taste, then that’s literally and figuratively harder to swallow, right?”Do-Yeon Cho, the director of the Smell and Taste Clinic at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said that “until you lose your sense of smell, you totally don’t understand how important smell is.
The vast majority of people with Covid-induced smell loss regain the sensation after three months. But Cho’s patient Alexas Brewer struggled with smell loss for nearly three years before she recovered. In December 2020, Brewer was teaching Asian and Italian cooking classes at Williams Sonoma in Birmingham, Ala., when she began experiencing symptoms.
“The [new study] is about how less people have smell loss from Covid, which I thank God for,” Brewer said. “But it means that the people who had original Covid and lost their smell are kind of separated from all the people who have Covid now.”
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