Lost Sense Of Smell A Warning Sign For Early Alzheimer’s

These included cinnamon, banana, onion, pineapple, chocolate, lemon, rose, turpentine, paint thinner, gasoline, smoke and soap.

Mayo researchers based their findings on tests that involved 1,430 seniors with the average age of 79.

Researchers concluded that participants who performed badly in the smell test were at a higher risk of developing memory problems, and those with the weakest sense of smell were at the highest risk of developing Alzheimer’s. The tests proved that older people who had a less effective sense of smell had links to memory loss.

When the study was started, no one showed any sign of dementia and all the participants were in healthy state. The results presented that 250 individuals marked their entry in the first state of dementia, followed by 64 participants who were clearly diagnosed with the disorder and 54 individuals reaching at Alzheimer’s.

The study’s lead researcher Rosebud Roberts, who teaches neurology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, said that the findings of the study suggest that performing a smell test might assist in finding out whether an elderly, mentally normal individual is at risk of having memory issues as well as determining whether existing mental issues in a person have the chance of progressing to Alzheimer’s disease. However, this link was not proven to have a cause-and-effect relationship.

AD symptoms in the entorhinal cortex, hippocampus and other temporal regions may limit ability to store and retrieve memories of smell, and thereby to identify odors correctly.

Experts warn that they are many different reasons behind the loss of the sense of smell that are not necessarily linked with dementia or memory problems. The smell test may provide even more accurate results if it is combined with other tests and scans, researchers believe.

‘The Brief Smell Identification Test (B-SIT) is easily administered in the outpatient setting, does not require administration or interpretation by trained personnel, has normative data, is relatively low-priced, and is noninvasive. Fifty-four people of the dementia group had the Alzheimer’s form of the disease.

Also, he adds that the fact that most people experience this sensory loss as they age, it shouldn’t concern elderly people about all suffering from dementia or Alzheimer.

“Clinical implications of our findings are that odour identification tests may have use for early detection of persons at risk of cognitive outcomes”, the authors of the study note.

However researchers say that the study could indicate that there may be a connection between a decreased sense of smell and neurodegenerative diseases in general. So, they need to conduct more research before they can reach a final conclusion.