Loss of smell from COVID most likely means you’ve got a mild case: study

(StudyFinds.org) - Losing your sense of smell might indicate that you have a mild case of COVID-19, according to a study published earlier this year. Statistics show that patients suffering moderate and severe cases of the infection are far less likely to experience the symptom.

In a study of 2,581 patients from 18 European hospitals, patients suffered a loss of smell in 85.9 percent of mild cases of COVID-19. That’s compared to 4.5 percent in moderate Covid-19 cases and nearly 7 percent in severe-to-critical cases. While those figures were patient-reported, objective clinical evaluations found a loss of smell in 54.7 percent of mild COVID cases and 36.6 percent of moderate-to-critical cases.

Mild cases were defined as patients without evidence of viral pneumonia or hypoxia – a lack of oxygen – who usually recovered at home, while severe cases involved being taken to hospital.

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The study examined the prevalence and recovery in patients with varying degrees of severity of the virus. “Olfactory dysfunction is more prevalent in mild COVID-19 forms than in moderate-to-critical forms, and 95 percent of patients recover their sense of smell at six months post-infection,” says professor Jerome Lechien, a lead author of the study at Paris-Saclay University in France, in a statement.

The average time of olfactory dysfunction reported by patients was 21.6 days. After two months,  almost a quarter (24.1%) of patients still suffered from a lack of smell, also known as anosmia. That number dropped to 15.3% of patients at 60 days post-infection, and nearly 5% at the six-month mark.

Young patients could have a higher rate of anosmia compared with elderly people.

“At the two months of follow-up, 75 percent to 85 percent of patients recovered olfaction according to subjective and objective olfactory evaluations. The main hypothesis underlying the higher prevalence of anosmia in mild COVID-19 would consist of differences in the immune response to the infection in mild and moderate-to-critical patients. Future studies are needed to determine the long-term recovery rate of COVID-19 patients,” the authors write.

The study is published in The Journal of Internal Medicine.

SWNS writer Chris Dyer contributed to this report.

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