Smell test for virus in works
Could be ‘canary in a coal mine,’ researchers announce
Get a whiff of this: Boston researchers are working on creating a smell test that they hope could be an important early detector for coronavirus.
“The sense of smell can be a canary in a coal mine for many diseases, including this,” said Dr. Mark Albers, a neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital.
The speed of the onset of the coronavirus pandemic means that much medical research is preliminary, and doctors are still scrambling to learn how the virus attacks the body. But what’s become increasingly apparent, per various studies, is that high percentages of people who test positive for the virus report losing their sense of smell — in many cases very significantly.
“I had one person tell me they had their head in a coffee jar and they get nothing” in terms of smell, Albers said. Another couldn’t smell gasoline, they told Albers. “Smell loss is showing a very high odds ratio — a very high risk of having the COVID infection.”
A couple of studies have shown as many as 60 or 70% of people who have the virus reporting they had loss of smell or taste early on in the progression of the disease. Some actual tests of COVIDpositive people’s senses of smell indicate that that number can be even higher — with some people having a more minor loss of smell that they don’t necessarily notice.
Albers said the test will involve essentially a postcard that’s sent or distributed to people, with instructions to go to a website and take the test. The card will have tabs to peel back, unveiling a smell. Participants will enter data on the website about what they perceive as the strength of the smell, and differentiating between smells.
“What we envision is being able to distribute these more broadly,” Albers told the Herald. “It could really play a role in helping flatten the curve.”
Albers said researchers are also looking at whether the recovery of smell and taste—which in some cases with this disease can be unusually abrupt — tracks with a lack of contagiousness or immunity. There’s also ongoing research into the connections between loss of smell and the ultimate severity of the disease; some preliminary research suggests that the cases that involve loss of smell often actually don’t end up being the cases that end up the worst.
Albers specializes in loss of smell, and has worked to use similar tests to detect the early onset of Alzheimer’s — a project he worked on with tech company ADK Group, alongside Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital.
Dan Tatar of ADK Group said that if the research pans out, his company and their partners will be ready to mass produce these tests.
“Our numbers will quickly scale up to the tens of thousands and the hundreds if thousands,” Tatar said.