- Some people who’ve recovered from COVID-19 say they’ve lost their sense of smell or experienced distorted scents, especially with food.
- Experts say this ailment can affect people’s ability to taste food and do daily tasks. It can even affect people’s moods.
- There are few treatments for the disorder, although some aroma therapies may help.
Sometimes in the middle of the night, Caroline Bauerle smells cigarette smoke in her smoke-free home.
“Is it a ghost?” she wonders.
It’s not. The scent comes to her as a lingering side effect of COVID-19 called phantosmia, or olfactory hallucinations.
Along with anosmia, which is the loss of the ability to smell, phantosmia is popping up as a lingering symptom for people with long-haul COVID-19.
“I really hope it resolves,” said Bauerle, who lives in Maryland and is experiencing both of those conditions.
“Physically, I’m OK, but it’s been 9 months, and this is the weirdest thing I have ever experienced,” she told Healthline.
At first, medical experts treating people with COVID-19 weren’t surprised to see symptoms associated with smell.
After all, says Dr. Hira Shaheen, who treated COVID-19 on the front line in Pakistan and also serves as a medical consultant for Volant Aroma, loss of smell is a common symptom for many lesser but similar viral infections.
“The respiratory tract gets swollen or inflamed, and that temporarily impacts olfactory cells in the nose,” Shaheen told Healthline.
But long-term loss of smell and scent confusion may be due to permanent or severe damage to olfactory cells, she said.
Why and how? That’s still being studied.
“We assumed that the virus directly attacked the olfactory tissue that sensed smell and passed information to the brain. But then multiple studies revealed that it actually impacted sustentacular cells, which are supporting cells present around the sensory tissue patch,” Shaheen explained.
“So, the jury is still out on it, and we need more research before identifying the exact mechanism.”
Source: healthline