According to data shared by the CDC last year, around 34% of patients who contracted COVID between 2020 and 2023 reported losing their sense of smell.

Many individuals who lost their sense of smell when infected with COVID-19 show structural and functional brain alterations on imaging, according to new work published in Nature. Now, experts are concerned that the symptoms could be associated with long-term brain alterations. In a group of people who reported anosmia as one of their COVID symptoms, experts recently observed an association between the loss of smell and decreased functional activity during decision-making tasks, reduced cortical thickness and other neural measures.

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    “This symptom can serve as a clinical, and in some cases a preclinical, indicator of neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, Huntington’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, vascular dementia, and mild cognitive impairment, among others,” co-corresponding author Pablo Billeke, with the Laboratory of Neuroscience and Neuromodulation in Santiago, Chile, and colleagues explain. “Therefore, objective evaluations and follow-up are required.”

    Well, that’s frightening. I don’t mean to be insensitive by downplaying the threat of HIV because it was always a death sentence in the early days. But this may be the HIV of our times. The thing that we study and talk about a lot for years and years. Apologies if I offended. I really didn’t mean to.