The John B. Pierce Laboratory, New Haven, USA.
Yale School of Medicine, Department of Surgery (Otolaryngology), New Haven, USA.
Chem Senses. 2020 Oct 9;45(7):509-511. doi: 10.1093/chemse/bjaa048.
Soon after the outbreak of COVID-19, reports that smell and taste are disrupted by the illness drew the attention of chemosensory scientists and clinicians throughout the world. While other upper respiratory viruses are known to produce such disruptions, their occurrence with the deadly and highly infectious SARS-CoV-2 virus raised new questions about the nature of the deficits, their cause, and whether they might serve as indicators of the onset of the disease. Published in the July and August 2020 issues of Chemical Senses are 2 innovative, large-scale survey studies that were quickly devised and launched by separate multinational groups to address these questions in olfaction, taste, and chemesthesis. The surveys, which took different approaches and had somewhat different goals, add significant new data on the incidence and severity of smell loss in COVID-19, and the potential for olfactory dysfunction to serve as an indicator of the spread and severity of the disease. Less definitive evidence of the frequency, characteristics, and magnitude of disruptions in taste and chemesthesis point to the need for future survey studies that combine and refine the strengths of the present ones, as well as clinical studies designed to selectively measure deficits in all 3 chemosensory systems.
新冠疫情爆发后不久，有报告称这种疾病会扰乱嗅觉和味觉，这引起了全球化学感官科学家和临床医生的关注。虽然已知其他上呼吸道病毒也会导致这种紊乱，但这种情况与致命且高度传染性的 SARS-CoV-2 病毒同时发生，引发了关于这些缺陷的性质、原因以及它们是否可能作为疾病发作的指标的新问题。嗅觉、味觉和化学感觉方面的 2 项创新性、大规模调查研究发表在 2020 年 7 月和 8 月的《Chemical Senses》上，这些研究是由不同的跨国团队迅速设计和发起的，旨在解决这些问题。这些调查采用了不同的方法，目标也略有不同，为新冠疫情中嗅觉丧失的发生率和严重程度，以及嗅觉功能障碍作为疾病传播和严重程度的指标的可能性提供了重要的新数据。关于味觉和化学感觉紊乱的频率、特征和程度的证据不太确定，这表明需要进行未来的调查研究，将目前研究的优势结合起来并加以完善，还需要进行旨在有选择地测量这 3 种化学感觉系统缺陷的临床研究。
