Encouraging results offer new hope
Commenting on the research, Cheng-Ying Ho, MD, associate professor of pathology at the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, described the study as “interesting and encouraging.
“Even though there is a small percentage of patients that suffer persistent smell loss from COVID, it’s still a large number of people who have smell dysfunction and are unable to recover.”
“So far, there is no treatment for COVID-related or viral infection–related smell loss. The only thing that can be done is olfactory training, but the effect is very limited. There is no drug or other type of therapy for smell loss so far,” said Dr. Ho, whose areas of expertise include neuromuscular pathology, pediatric neuropathology, and neuropathology of infectious diseases.
“Even though it’s a small study with only seven patients, the results are very encouraging. After 2 weeks of stimulation, almost all had smell recovery that lasted several months. The weakness of the study is that they didn’t have a control group. The next step would be to expand the study to include more participants and have an adequate control group that received the sham stimuli to see if their results still stand when they have more participants.
“This very encouraging and relatively noninvasive treatment modality can give patients with smell loss some hope that this therapy can help them recover their sense of smell to some degree. The study seems to suggest that either the tDCS can stimulate nerve regrowth or that it actually can correct the rewiring of the brain,” added Dr. Ho.
The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. No competing interests were declared.
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.