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One of the most characteristic symptoms of Covid-19 is loss of smell. And also one of the most persistent. Up to 86% of patients with mild symptoms experience olfactory dysfunction that, in some cases, can last up to six months. These are the main conclusions of a recent study published in the journal « Journal of Internal Medicine»
The research, which collected epidemiological data on 2,518 patients from 18 European hospitals between March 22 and June 3, 2020, aimed to examine the prevalence of anosmia and the recovery period in patients with different degrees of severity of Covid-19.
The prevalence of olfactory dysfunction reported by patients was 85.9% in mild cases of Covid-19, 4.5% in moderate cases, and 6.9% in severe to critical cases. Which means that this symptom is more characteristic of less severe cases. Precisely, another recent study carried out by Spanish internists already pointed out that those cases of coronavirus that present symptoms such as those of a common cold or with a clear loss of smell and taste, are the ones with the best prognosis.
The mean duration of olfactory dysfunction reported by patients from the European research was 21.6 days, but almost a quarter of those affected assured that, 60 days after losing it, they had not recovered it.
Objective clinical evaluations identified hyposmia / anosmia in 54.7% of mild Covid-19 cases and in 36.6% of moderate to critical cases. In a new evaluation, at 60 days and 6 months, 15.3% and 4.7% of these patients did not objectively recover their sense of smell, respectively.
«Olfactory dysfunction is more common in mild forms of Covid-19 than in moderate to critical forms, and 95% of patients regain their sense of smell in 6 months after infection, ”says Dr. Jerome R. Lechien of Paris Saclay University and lead author of the study.
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