For someone with Alzheimer’s disease, it might start with repeatedly misplacing house keys and forgetting the dog’s name. Then, it might easily become wandering off and getting lost, or even, forgetting key life events. Within as little as four years after diagnosis, people with Alzheimer’s, a form of dementia, can die of the disease. Dementia is general term that describes a range of symptoms involving a serious decline in thinking skills or memory. It affects 5.3 million people in the United States. Therefore, being able to predict Alzheimer’s disease before it occurs may buy clinicians and patients time to treat or prevent dementia.
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Researchers from Mayo Clinic recently linked a decreased sense of smell to the onset of Alzheimer’s, suggesting that a loss of smell may be associated with the appearance of Alzheimer’s. The researchers gave over a thousand participants a smell test and tracked how their sense of smell changed over an average of 3.5 years. A decrease in the number of correct answers in a patient’s smell test score corresponded to an increased risk of mild cognitive impairment.
The association between a loss of sense of smell and neurodegenerative changes may exist because Alzheimer’s disease affects a person’s sense of smell. Some changes in the brain associated with Alzheimer’s have been found in the olfactory bulb, a region of the brain connected to the nose, before the onset of symptoms of Alzheimer’s. Additionally, these symptoms of Alzheimer’s might also involve a person’s ability to store and retrieve memories of smell, making it harder to identify odors correctly. A decrease in certain nutrients in the brain also cause loss of smell in Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other forms of dementia.
However, certain studies also point out that an association between poor smell function and Alzheimer’s dementia does not necessarily mean smell tests can be used to predict Alzheimer’s. The two could be effects of a different unknown cause, or be related in another way. But maybe in the future, with much more research into the area, early detection of Alzheimer’s could improve a patient’s chances of preventing or delaying the progression of the disease.
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