The loss of the smell was a decisive symptom of Covid, and for some people, a curse. Most people recover their feelings with their enemies fading, but some never recover. This means the inability to know if the milk has stopped, or if there is a gas leakage or something similar to your newborn baby.
But for the victims of Anosmia and its street siblings, Parosmia, where normal smells turn into the smell of rotting meat or wastewater, there is a new hope. The researchers discovered that the simple procedure can help people restore their smell after years of losing viral infections such as Covid, or even decades.
The first patient in the UK began to receive treatment this month and doctors hope that the operation will be easily released via NHS.
Krie Kelly is the first patient in the UK to receive treatment, which consists of platelet -rich plasma injections (PRP) from her bloodand It is prepared using the centrifugation device to separate the platelets from the red and white blood cells.
Kelly said: “It is amazing to be able to say” there is a treatment, “because for years it was outside the table. “It is fun to be asked to be the first to receive it.”
Kelly lost her sense of scent after developing sinusitis in 2012, describing Anosmia as “like a bereavement.” After three months, I started in the scent, a condition known as pantosmia, then developed Parosmia.
It was the only help that you could find is the research she suggested that she could re -train her feeling by inhaling known scents such as coffee and lavender. The situation was not unknown until Kelly decided to create a charity, SpoilTo provide support to other patients and make other scent training groups.
Covid’s epidemic changed everything, as millions of people around the world lost their smell, including Catherine Ryan, the comedian, who said the disorder made it feel “impotence.” ABRCENT moved from 1500 members in its support group to 95,000 at the same time that its income disappeared from the smell training groups when cheaper competitors appeared. The charity closed last year.
But the epidemic also sparked a new wave of research. Professor Zara Patel, director of laparoscopic skull base surgery at Stanford University, was studying Anosimia for some time and monitoring a neuroscience paper that indicates that PRP may help in regenerating nerves.
This is important because of the cause of the Covid’s effect on the smell-SARS-COV-2 virus is associated with cells around the shaming nerve in the upper part of the nose.
Patel told Al -method. observer. “Any other cranial nerves have the ability to renew, but the tissue nerve does.”
So if the PRP can help the shami nerve renewal, it may reduce anusmia. Patel created a series of random control experiments – easier to employ after Covid – and found that PRP did better than the imaginary drug after three months and the effect was greater after 12 months. In one case, a 73 -year -old man regained his smell 45 years old After losing.
Patel’s work impressed Professor Claire Hopkins, former president of the British Nose Association and a nose professor at the King’s College in London, which is practiced at Jay Hospital in London. It was one of the first people to identify a link between Covid and Anosmia and was investigating other treatments such as steroids.
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“I was hesitant before because I know that many patients are desperate and they will try anything,” Hopkins said, while mentioning folk remedies such as ineffective burning orange.
“[The evidence] It is so important that I feel that I should offer this to my patients, which is a relatively minimal gaze. The risks are small, so I think it’s something I can present now. I will search for an attempt to prepare this inside NHS. PRP is used inside NHS for other things, so I hope we can present them. “
Since the PRP is made of centrifuges that are already used in hospitals, the patient’s blood is used, there are fewer organizational obstacles from other medical procedures. Hopkins and other ear, nose and throat teams need to obtain approval of the procedure from their hospital panels.
Kelly needs to get additional PRP injections over the next three months to complete the treatment. It is careful about whether she can already feel any traces.
“Maybe I am the most severe observer in my sense of smell,” she said, referring to the years of training on the smell. “I still can’t eat onions. I’m great with coffee, but there are other things like roasted meat that I don’t really enjoy as I used to.
“When I get out of the house in the morning, I will realize that I receive a kind of comments about what time is for the year and this type of things. It is not always easy to say that I smell a specific thing, but I am always aware of it.
“On the last day, I got out of my house, and I was thinking about myself,” Oh my God, a good smell. “