After developing Covid-19, many have experienced smell disorders, a very frequent symptom of the first strains of the virus. Even if it is now much less common with Omicron, some patients have still not recovered – partially or totally – their sense of smell, and are in despair. But patients with Covid-19 are not the only ones affected: it happens that some patients with neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s are affected by anosmia.
Will they one day be able to regain their sense of smell as before? This is the bet of two American researchers from the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of the Commonwealth of Virginia, Richard Constanzo and Daniel Coelho. For almost 40 years, their main goal has been to treat as many cases of anosmia as possible, a project that has taken on even more meaning since the pandemic and the cases of loss of smell linked to Covid-19.
And for several years, Professor Constanzo has been working on a bionic process, like a hearing aid, which could provide the lost olfactory abilities. Namely: a human nose has 400 different types of olfactory sensorscapable of distinguishing more than 1,000 billion odors.
What are the characteristics of this bionic nose?
Presented in the form of glasses, this prototype “is now ready to be tested on humans with anosmia“, indicate the specialists. It restores the nerve connections of people who have lost their sense of smell by sending signals to a receiver – like a cochlear implant used to improve hearing in people with deafness – located under the skin. , which will translate odors into electrical impulses, which the olfactory bulb can recognize.
If the final goal of the team is to create an electronic nose, it is first trying to expand the range of smells of these sensors: in fact, the current prototypes barely recognize ten smells.
They also seek to understand the path by which the signals will be sent to the brain. Normally, information is transmitted by the chemoreceptors present in the nose to two olfactory bulbs, placed behind the nasal cavity, reports Le Point. They are then processed there and sent back to other parts of the brain devoted in particular to memory and emotions. The question remains for the moment still open with regard to the bionic nose.
“It will take us another 10 to 15 years to be able to present a functional prosthesis“, admit the two researchers, who do not want to give false hope to patients who have lost their sense of smell.
Source :Point
