Sanne Boesveldt Boesveldt, who works in Human Nutrition and Health at the University, is a member of the Global Consortium for Chemosensory Research, which is researching the sense of smell and taste in coronavirus patients. Worldwide, about 40,000 coronavirus patients, including 5000 in the Netherlands, have filled in a questionnaire about their sense of smell and taste. Their answers show that the vast majority of patients are left with a diminished sense of smell. In fact, a sudden loss of the sense of smell is the best indicator that people are suffering from Covid-19, says Boesveldt.
Sense of smell
‘The symptoms are not like the symptoms of colds or the flu, which are caused by other viruses,’ says Boesveldt. ‘With colds, your smell and taste are affected by a blocked nose. We haven’t discovered how Covid-19 affects our sense of smell. We think it is because the virus attaches itself to receptors in our nose around the cells that are responsible for our capacity to smell. That is why these olfactory cells don’t function.’
Emails
Boesveldt gets emails every day from coronavirus patients who have lost their sense of smell. They haven’t been able to smell anything for months and they are very worried. ‘Unlike what happens with a common cold, it doesn’t come back in a couple of weeks,’ says Boesveldt. ‘Coronavirus patients get their sense of smell back in the end, according to our data, although that doesn’t apply to everyone.’’
In the Netherlands, Boesveldt is working with her Wageningen colleague Garmt Dijksterhuis, researchers from Utrecht and Maastricht, the Gelderse Vallei hospital in Ede, and a patients’ association. She has published a weblog on the subject on the WUR website.
Research
She advises anyone who suddenly loses their sense of smell to get tested immediately to prevent Covid-19 from spreading further. She also appeals to people with symptoms of the virus to participate in her study.