Barie Carmichael lost her sense of taste and smell while
traveling in Europe. She remembers keeping a dinner date at a Michelin-starred
restaurant but tasting nothing.
اضافة اعلان
It may sound like a case of COVID-19. But Carmichael, 72, a
fellow at the University of Virginia’s business school, lost her ability to
taste and smell for three years in the 1990s. The only respiratory infection
she’d had was bronchitis.
Scientists say that although the complications of COVID have
riveted peoples’ attention, many symptoms — like a loss of smell — are not
unique to COVID. Heart inflammation, lung and nerve damage and small blood
clots in the lining of lungs occur in a small but noticeable percentage of
patients who have had other respiratory and viral infections.
No one is saying COVID is the equivalent of, say, the flu.
But COVID-19 is providing a new opportunity to understand the complications of
many common viral infections.
Before the pandemic, research grants to study a loss of
smell were hard to come by, said Danielle Reed, associate director of the
Monell Chemical Senses Center, a nonprofit research group in Philadelphia.
But now, she said, “there is an explosive growth of interest
among funders.” (She added that most who say they have lost a sense of taste
have really lost a sense of smell.)
Monell researchers want to compare how often people lose
their sense of smell after a bout with the flu versus a bout with COVID-19 —
and how long the loss lasts. Is there a genetic predisposition to this
complication?
Researchers at other institutions want to know who is susceptible
to heart infections, blood clots or lung damage after having a respiratory
virus like the flu.
Heart problems following a viral infection are among the
best studied. Every year, myocarditis — an inflammation of the heart muscle —
affects as many as 1.5 million people worldwide, most of whom had a prior
respiratory virus infection. Most recover fully.
But symptoms like fatigue are often not recognized as being
related to
myocarditis. And Dr. Bruce McManus, an emeritus pathology professor
at the University of British Columbia, suspects that the fatigue that sometimes
follows a bout with COVID-19 might be caused by this heart problem.
“We think of COVID-19 and influenza as respiratory diseases,
and in fact they are,” McManus said. “But the reason many patients reach their
demise in many instances is myocardial.”
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