Have you lost your sense of taste and smell after being infected with COVID-19? It can take up to a year to return, according to a study. Since the pandemic was declared in early 2020, the loss of smell associated with Covid-19, the complete loss of smell, has quickly emerged as a telltale sign of infection. Loss of smell can seriously affect a person’s quality of life, making it extremely difficult to taste food, detect atmospheric hazards in the environment, and perform other functions that depend on the senses.
Researchers at Strasbourg University Hospitals in France followed 97 Covid-19 patients who had lost their sense of taste and smell for an entire year and asked them to complete a survey every four months. According to the study, published Thursday in JAMA Network Open.
Of the 97 patients, 51 were also required to undergo objective tests to confirm self-reported investigations. By eight months, 49 of the 51 patients had fully recovered from their sense of taste and smell.
One of the two non-recovered patients was able to smell, but abnormally, while the other was still unable to feel at the end of the study. While the 46 patients for Covid-19 did not have an objective test, they all reported a full recovery after a full year.
“Our results indicate that an additional 10 percent increase in recovery can be expected in 12 months, compared to studies with a six-month follow-up which found that only 85.9 percent of patients recovered. This confirms the findings of basic research,” said Marion Reno of the university. performed on animals, which include imaging studies and post-mortem pathology, suggesting that the loss of smell associated with Covid-19 is probably due to peripheral inflammation.
“Persistent loss of smell associated with Covid-19 has an excellent prognosis with nearly complete recovery in one year. As clinicians manage an increasing number of people with post-Covid syndrome, long-term outcome data are essential to predict outcomes and provide informed advice.”
A previous study from Johns Hopkins University in the US showed that long-term exposure to particulate matter 2.5 – a mixture of solid particles and liquid droplets found in the air – doubles the risk of odor loss.
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