New Delhi: Getting a cold accompanied by sneezing and coughing often means losing your sense of smell as well.
What is happening inside the nostrils during a cold has long troubled scientists amid the Covid situation.
Researchers have finally linked the reasons for the loss of sense of smell to long coronavirus infection.
The olfactory nerves, which enable the sense of smell in our anatomy, faces decline in the number of its cells from an immune assault on them.
The researchers expect that the findings could help devise new strategies to better treat the viral infection.
The finding also could help better understand the underlying causes of other long-Covid-19 symptoms, including generalized fatigue, shortness of breath, and brain fog, according to a report published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
Researchers from Duke, Harvard and University of California-San Diego studied the olfactory epithelial samples from 24 biopsies, which included nine patients facing long-term smell loss after Covid 19.
Findings show “widespread infiltration of T-cells, involving in inflammatory response, in the olfactory epithelium. This tissue in the nose is where smell nerve cells are located.
Bradley Goldstein, the senior author of the study, reportedly said that many suffering from altered sense of smell during acute viral infection would recover within in one to two weeks of infection, but some do not.
“We need to better understand why this subset of people will go on to have persistent smell loss for months to years after being infected with SARS-CoV2,” reportedly said Bradley Goldstein.