Smell and Taste Loss Recovery Time in COVID-19 Patients and Disease Severity

Athanasia Printza; Mihalis Katotomichelakis; Konstantinos Valsamidis; Symeon Metallidis; Periklis Panagopoulos; Maria Panopoulou; Vasilis Petrakis; Jannis Constantinidis

doi:10.3390/jcm10050966

Smell and Taste Loss Recovery Time in COVID-19 Patients and Disease Severity

J Clin Med. 2021 Mar 2;10(5):966. doi: 10.3390/jcm10050966.

Authors

Athanasia Printza¹, Mihalis Katotomichelakis², Konstantinos Valsamidis¹, Symeon Metallidis³, Periklis Panagopoulos⁴, Maria Panopoulou⁵, Vasilis Petrakis⁴, Jannis Constantinidis¹

Affiliations

¹ First Otolaryngology Department, Medical School, Faculty of Health Sciences, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece.
² Otolaryngology Department, School of Health Sciences, Democritus University of Thrace, Dragana, 387479 Alexandroupoli, Greece.
³ First Department of Internal Medicine, AHEPA Hospital, Medical School, Faculty of Health Sciences, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece.
⁴ Department of Internal Medicine, School of Health Sciences, Democritus University of Thrace, Dragana, 387479 Alexandroupoli, Greece.
⁵ Laboratory of Microbiology, School of Health Sciences, Democritus University of Thrace, Dragana, 387479 Alexandroupoli, Greece.

Abstract

A significant proportion of people infected with SARS-CoV-2 report a new onset of smell or taste loss. The duration of the chemosensory impairment and predictive factors of recovery are still unclear. We aimed to investigate the prevalence, temporal course and recovery predictors in patients who suffered from varying disease severity. Consecutive adult patients diagnosed to be infected with SARS-CoV-2 via reverse-transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) at two coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) Reference Hospitals were contacted to complete a survey reporting chemosensory loss, severity, timing and duration, nasal symptoms, smoking, allergic rhinitis, chronic rhinosinusitis, comorbidities and COVID-19 severity. In a cross-sectional study, we contacted 182 patients and 150 responded. Excluding the critically ill patients, 38% reported gustatory and 41% olfactory impairment (74% severe/anosmia). Most of the patients (88%) recovered their sense of smell by two months (median: 11.5 days; IQR: 13.3). For 23%, the olfactory loss lasted longer than a month. There were no significant differences in the prevalence and duration of chemosensory loss between groups of varying COVID-19 severity, and sexes (all p > 0.05). Moderate hyposmia resolved quicker than more severe loss (p = 0.04). Smell and taste loss are highly prevalent in COVID-19. Most patients recover fast, but nearly one out of ten have not recovered in two months.

Keywords: COVID-19; anosmia; chemosensory loss; coronavirus disease-2019; disease severity; gustatory dysfunction; loss of smell; loss of taste; olfactory dysfunction; post-viral; recovery.