Loss of smell: Potential early warning of future memory and thinking problems
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Loss of smell: Potential early warning of future memory and thinking problems
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Loss of smell: Potential early warning of future memory and thinking problems
A recent study published in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, showed that people who carry the APOE e4 gene variant are at the highest risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, and they may lose their ability to perceive odors earlier.
This diminished ability to smell may be an early warning of future cognitive and memory difficulties.
“Testing a person’s ability to detect odors may be an effective way to predict future cognitive problems,” said study author Matthew S. GoodSmith, MD, Ph.D., of the University of Chicago. Although more research is needed Studies are needed to confirm these findings and determine what degree of smell loss predicts future risk, but these results may be promising, especially in studies aimed at identifying early-stage high-risk groups for dementia.”
The study involved a home survey that included testing the sense of smell of more than 865 people — both their ability to detect smells and their ability to identify what they were smelling.
Tests are performed every five years. In addition, people’s thinking and memory skills were tested twice, five years apart.
The DNA samples provided the researchers with information on carriers of genes associated with an increased risk of Alzheimer’s.
In a test to see if people could smell, they were given scores ranging from zero to six, depending on how many different concentrations of odors they could smell.
At one point in time, people with the genetic variant were 37 percent less able to detect odors than people without the gene.
The researchers took into account other factors that could have influenced the results, such as age, gender and education level.
Carriers of the gene begin to experience hyposmia between the ages of 65 and 69. At this age, carriers of the gene could smell an average of about 3.2 odors, compared with about 3.9 for those without the gene.
People with the variant gene showed no difference in their ability to distinguish smells until they were 75 to 79 years old.
Once they began to lose the ability to distinguish smells, the gene carriers’ abilities declined faster than those without the gene.
At the beginning of the study, the thinking and memory abilities of the two groups were similar.
But as expected, thinking ability declined more rapidly over time in those who carried the gene variant than those without the gene.
“Identifying the mechanisms underlying these relationships will help us understand the role of olfaction in neurodegeneration,” GoodSmith said.
Loss of smell: Potential early warning of future memory and thinking problems
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