![Loss of smell found in 86% of mild forms of Covid-19](https://img.passeportsante.net/1000x526/2021-01-07/i98959-.jpeg)
A team of French researchers analyzed the smell of patients with Covid-19 and observed that the prevalence of patients affected by olfactory dysfunction was 85.9% in mild cases, compared with 6.9% in severe cases .
Anosmia would affect mild forms of the disease more
According to the conclusions of a study involving 2,581 patients from 18 European hospitals, the loss of smell would be one of the most common symptoms of contamination with the new coronavirus, but its prevalence would be different according to the degree of severity of the disease.
Indeed, patients showed anosmia in 85.9% of mild cases of Covid-19, 4.5% of moderate cases and 6.9% of cases ranging from severe to critical.
To achieve these results, patients were tested using 16 scent pens and analyzed 30 and 60 days, then six months after initial infection. “The main hypothesis underlying the higher prevalence of anosmia in mild COVID-19 would be differences in the immune response to infection in mild and moderate to critical patients.”, explains Professor Lechien, lead author of the study.
Slow recovery of smell
The average duration of this loss of smell was 21.6 days on average. But at 60 days, 15.3% of patients said they had not regained their sense of smell and 4.7% at 6 months.
At the origin of this loss of smell: an inflammation in the environment of the olfactory neurons, which would make them inaccessible to the odorous molecules and would even end up damaging them. A mechanism that could explain why anosmia sometimes lasts longer than the disease itself.