Is there a link between COVID-19 and lack of smell and taste?
It started last week with a runny nose and lots of sneezing. A day later, my stuffed-up nose cleared but my symptoms morphed into a low-grade flu — achey, low energy. I don’t have any concerning indicators of COVID-19 like fever, cough or difficulty breathing, so I was told over the phone by my doctor just to stay inside and rest it out. No problem, I thought, since that’s what I was planning on doing anyways.
Two days later with my symptoms not getting worse or better, I defrosted some butternut squash soup, since soup was all I could stomach. I noticed when I breathed it in, I couldn’t smell anything. I moved my nose closer to the broth and inhaled deeper. I could feel the vapour of the steam coming from the soup on my nose, but the smell was totally missing.
Weirded out, I cut a lime and put it under my nose. Nothing. I grabbed a bottle of Dr. Bronner’s tea tree oil soap, and squeezed it under each nostril. This is what I normally do during my morning shower, to give me a sensory kick, in an effort to wake up. This time my efforts were useless. It felt like my nose was censoring me of smell. When I drank some of the soup I had been warming, I realized quickly that my taste was gone too. I could feel the warmth of the broth, but it was totally absent of flavour. Eating was now an entirely textural experience.
While I haven’t been tested and confirmed to have COVID-19 yet, there have been several reports of situations similar to mine in confirmed cases. It seems that a common, but at this point completely anecdotal, symptom of COVID-19 is anosmia, the loss of smell.
At home with confirmed COVID and my main symptoms are complete anosmia (loss of sense of smell) and ageusia (loss of sense of taste). No fever or cough! Symptoms are often mild and you may be spreading it to the vulnerable without knowing it! Important to stay at home if you can!
— Tamara Elliott (@dr_tam_elliott) March 20, 2020
Just to give you guys an update, loss of smell and taste is definitely one of the symptoms, haven’t been able to smell anything for the last 4 days. Anyone experiencing the same thing?
— Rudy Gobert (@rudygobert27) March 22, 2020
A loss of smell is emerging as a symptom of #COVID-19. Might be due to the silencing of a gene called sonic hedgehog and a loss of signaling factors that cause stem cells to divide in the tongue and nose. Alpha-lipoic acid seems to help. Here's the paper:👃https://t.co/4HvNYYb92Q
— David Sinclair, PhD AO (@davidasinclair) March 23, 2020
this whole loss of taste and smell thing is starting to get depressing
— Leo (@leonardoaires) March 27, 2020
Screening update: 2 symptoms now associated with #coronavirus: anosmia (loss of sense of smell) and ageusia (diminished sense of taste). Some doctors instructing adults who lose these senses to self-quarantine for 7 days. In cohort of 2000 Koreans with infection, 30% had anosmia.
— Matt McCarthy (@DrMattMcCarthy) March 23, 2020
Ageusia, the loss of a sense of taste, also seems to be something that many sick people have been experiencing in recent months.
On Thursday, the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery announced they’d developed a reporting tool for clinicians, as a result of the increasing anecdotal evidence that anosmia with resultant dysgeusia were frequently reported symptoms linked to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“There is rapidly accumulating anecdotal evidence that anosmia with resultant dysgeusia are frequently reported symptoms associated with the COVID-19 pandemic,’ a statement on their website read. “Similar reports are surfacing from multiple countries around the world including the United States.”
The tool was developed in order to allow healthcare providers of all specialties throughout the world to submit data to confidentially report on anosmia and dysgeusia related to COVID-19.
In the UK, a group representing ear, nose and throat doctors put out a statement about the link between COVID-19 and loss of smell.
“There is already good evidence from South Korea, China and Italy that significant numbers of patients with proven COVID-19 infection have developed anosmia/hyposmia,” it read. “In Germany it is reported that more than 2 in 3 confirmed cases have anosmia. In South Korea, where testing has been more widespread, 30% of patients testing positive have had anosmia as their major presenting symptom in otherwise mild cases.”
‘This happens all the time’
Isaac Bogoch, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Toronto, says at this point it’s too early to say for certain if anosmia is a confirmed symptom of COVID-19.
“This happens all the time,” he says. “Every single time you have a cold your sense of smell will change.”
He suspects that once the pandemic is under control, and there is a sustainable amount of data, anosmia could be included on the list of symptoms. When a symptom is considered specific with an illness, rather than sensitive, it means that everything else can be ruled out. But Bogoch says at this point, anosmia is still a sensitive symptom.
“There may be some association here but we have to balance that with hype and excitement and hypersensitivity towards any shred of anecdotal evidence that’s coming out with COVID-19,” he says. “We really need to study these in a systematic manner.”
He adds that for now, there are more important things to be concerned about.
“It might be a neat little clue, but it’s not going to be the one thing that separates us from other infections,” Bogoch says. “We just need to look at the data in a systematic manner, rather than dogpile symptoms on top of each other and say whether they're associated or not. It may be, or may not be.”
