Without Covid we probably wouldn’t have understood how serious, debilitating and destabilizing losing our sense of smell can be. If you can’t smell perfumes you can no longer be a chef, you can’t smell a newborn baby or the fragrance of a perfume, you can’t sense the danger of a fire, a gas leak, or spoiled food. In summary: you live in a world that has no olfactory connotation and without smell you also lose taste. And he entrusts us to memory, to memories. And it’s called Profumo dei memoria, a bitter orange home fragrance, on sale online in a limited edition on the website of the Florentine perfumery house Aquaflor, which created it together with Sanofi and the patient associations Federasma and Allergie Odv and Respiriamo Together with Aps, to which 40% of the proceeds will be donated.
Atopic dermatitis, free consultations in 40 centers throughout Italy
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The disease that steals the sense of smell is called nasal polyposis and is a type 2 chronic inflammatory disease, which affects men after the age of 18, especially men over the age of 40, with an incidence between 2 and 4% of the adult population. Loss of smell is one of the symptoms. “But the disease causes great headaches, difficulty sleeping because you breathe through your mouth, you snore,” he says Simona Barbagliapresident of the National Patient Association Let’s Breathe Together-APS – furthermore, patients with polyposis undergo repeated surgical operations, which are never conclusive, long courses of cortisone and never get better”.
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But what is this disease in detail? “It is a chronic inflammatory pathology of the nasal mucosa and paranasal sinuses – he explains Veronica Seccia, head of the Rhinology clinic of the University Hospital of Pisa – causes swelling and alteration of the nasal mucosa which is easily visible during the visit. The sensation is of having a stuffy, obstructed nose, but being a neurological mechanism, a very obstructed patient does not necessarily have a greater loss of smell. Monoclonal antibodies, and in particular dupilumab, have proven to be decisive and after just a few days of use, patients continue to have polyps and begin to smell something again. These drugs – which are in band H of hospital prescription – can only be used when cortisone therapy or surgery are not conclusive”.
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That they work confirms this Nadia, who regained his sense of smell after 10 years. “I underwent five operations in eight years – she says – but already 3-4 months after the operation the polyps reappeared. Mine is a severe form, and neither interventions nor massive courses of cortisone worked. With the biological drug I really came back to life, already after a few weeks I could smell the smells. I am really grateful to our healthcare system, because they are expensive drugs and without the help of the NHS it would be impossible to afford them.”
Drugs that – specifies Mario Picozza, president of Federasma and Allergie Odv – they are expensive but effective bullets and you have to be sure they hit the target. Intervening on type 2 inflammation and blocking the inflammatory cascade. It is no coincidence that this drug also works for pathologies that have a similar genesis, such as severe atopic dermatitis, severe asthma and for some other pathologies for which there is not yet an indication. One bullet for many targets, including COPD.
#smell #Covid #nasal #polyposis
– 2024-04-21 07:19:59
