Department of Psychiatry, Chung-Ang University College of Medicine, Seoul 06974, Korea.
Department of Otorhinolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Chung-Ang University College of Medicine, Seoul 06974, Korea.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020 Nov 14;17(22):8441. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17228441.
Among olfactory functions, odor identification is the most studied predictor of dementia. We aimed to verify whether patients with dementia are less aware of specific odors than cognitively normal individuals using an odor identification test, which includes odorants that are culturally familiar to South Koreans. We divided 139 older adults aged 57-79 years into the dementia and normal cognition groups. Odor identification function was assessed in all participants. We conducted hierarchical logistic regression analyses with the diagnosis of dementia as a dependent variable and three demographic characteristics, as well as 12 odor identification items, as independent variables. Impaired odor identification for herbal medicine (odds ratio (OR) = 9.420; = 0.012) and Korean grilled meat (OR = 5.361; = 0.019) and older age (OR = 1.176; = 0.005) were significant predictors of dementia. Impaired odor identification of culturally familiar odorants was associated with dementia risk. This may be explained by the fact that compared with culturally non-specific universal odorants, familiar odorants are more related to episodic memory, which is impaired in the early stages of dementia. Thus, an optimal combination of odor identification items should be used for screening individuals with cognitive decline requiring further neurocognitive function tests.
在嗅觉功能中，气味识别是研究最多的痴呆预测因子。我们旨在使用气味识别测试验证痴呆患者是否比认知正常个体对特定气味的感知更差，该测试包括对韩国人来说具有文化熟悉度的气味剂。我们将 139 名年龄在 57-79 岁的老年人分为痴呆症和正常认知组。所有参与者均进行了气味识别功能评估。我们进行了分层逻辑回归分析，将痴呆症的诊断作为因变量，将三个人口统计学特征以及 12 个气味识别项目作为自变量。草药（优势比（OR）= 9.420； = 0.012）和韩国烤肉（OR = 5.361； = 0.019）以及年龄较大（OR = 1.176； = 0.005）的气味识别受损是痴呆症的显著预测因子。对文化熟悉气味剂的气味识别受损与痴呆症风险相关。这可能是因为与文化非特异性的通用气味剂相比，熟悉的气味剂与情景记忆的关系更密切，而情景记忆在痴呆症的早期阶段就已经受损。因此，应该使用气味识别项目的最佳组合来筛选需要进一步神经认知功能测试的认知能力下降的个体。
