Drnovsek Eva, Haehner Antje, Bensafi Moustafa, Hummel Thomas
Smell and Taste Clinic, Department of Otorhinolaryngology Technische Universität Dresden Dresden Germany.
CNRS, UMR5292, INSERM U1028, Lyon Neuroscience Research Center University Lyon Lyon France.
Laryngoscope Investig Otolaryngol. 2024 Aug 13;9(4):e1267. doi: 10.1002/lio2.1267. eCollection 2024 Aug.
An olfactory perceptual fingerprint (OPF) defines one's olfactory perception using perceptual descriptor ratings (such as odor pleasantness, intensity) for a set of odors. OPFs have been shown to distinguish patients with COVID-related olfactory dysfunction (OD) and healthy controls with 86% accuracy. However, all participants rated the same odorants. With the aim to evaluate whether the OPFs are indeed odorant independent, previously published dataset by Lötsch et al. was reanalyzed. Furthermore, this independent dataset was used to check whether the OPFs separate patients with OD due to various causes from controls.
The study included 104 controls and 42 patients, who were randomized into four odor sets with 10 odorants each. Odorants were presented using a computer-controlled olfactometer and evaluated on scales from 1 () to 5 () using perceptual descriptors pleasant, intensive, familiar, edible, irritating, cold/warm, and painful.
Permutational multivariate analysis of variance showed that the odor set did not have a significant effect on the OPFs, confirming that the OPFs are indeed odorant independent. On the other hand, both diagnosis and age affected the OPFs ( < .001) and explained around 11% and 5% of the variance of the OPFs, respectively. Furthermore, a supervised machine learning method, random forest classifier, showed that OPF can distinguish patients and controls with 80% accuracy.
OPFs are odorant independent. Patients perceived odors as less familiar, less intense, and less edible than controls. Other perceptual descriptors were much less important for the separation of patients and controls.
嗅觉感知指纹（OPF）使用一组气味的感知描述符评分（如气味愉悦度、强度）来定义一个人的嗅觉感知。研究表明，OPF能够以86%的准确率区分新冠相关嗅觉功能障碍（OD）患者和健康对照者。然而，所有参与者对相同的气味剂进行了评分。为了评估OPF是否确实与气味剂无关，我们重新分析了Lötsch等人之前发表的数据集。此外，该独立数据集用于检验OPF能否区分各种病因导致的OD患者与对照者。
该研究纳入了104名对照者和42名患者，他们被随机分为四个气味组，每组有10种气味剂。使用计算机控制的嗅觉计呈现气味剂，并使用愉悦、强烈、熟悉、可食用、刺激性、冷/热和疼痛等感知描述符，在1（）至5（）的量表上进行评估。
置换多变量方差分析表明，气味组对OPF没有显著影响，证实OPF确实与气味剂无关。另一方面，诊断和年龄均影响OPF（<0.001），分别解释了OPF变异的约11%和5%。此外，一种监督式机器学习方法——随机森林分类器表明，OPF能够以80%的准确率区分患者和对照者。
OPF与气味剂无关。与对照者相比，患者感知到的气味不那么熟悉、不那么强烈且不那么可食用。其他感知描述符对区分患者和对照者的重要性要小得多。
3级。
