Researchers may have solved the mystery surrounding one of the stranger symptoms of coronavirus: losing your sense of smell.
Let’s connect the dots!
As we learn more about COVID-19, it’s emerged that losing your sense of smell is one of the earliest and most common symptoms patients report.
For that reason it is now considered a better indicator of coronavirus than more common screening criteria like fever. Now Harvard researchers may have cracked the code of why it happens in the first place.
The scientists found the virus attacked cells that support your olfactory neurons, basically, the pathway that sends the sense of smell to your brain.
And that may actually be good news since the virus is attacking the support system and not the neurons themselves— meaning you should recover your sense of smell.
The researchers still have more work to do. They want to expand the study to confirm the results and also see if they can come up with a treatment…or a way to use this information for a coronavirus diagnostic test.
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