Abstract
The olfactory system provides numerous functions to humans, influencing ingestive behavior, awareness of environmental hazards and social communication. Approximately ⅕ of the general population exhibit an impaired sense of smell. However, in contrast to the many affected, only few patients complain of their impairment. So how important is it for humans to have an intact sense of smell? Or is it even dispensable, at least in the Western world? To investigate this, we compared 32 patients, who were born without a sense of smell (isolated congenital anosmia - ICA) with 36 age-matched controls. A broad questionnaire was used, containing domains relevant to olfaction in daily life, along with a questionnaire about social relationships and the BDI-questionnaire. ICA-patients differed only slightly from controls in functions of daily life related to olfaction. These differences included enhanced social insecurity, increased risk for depressive symptoms and increased risk for household accidents. In these domains the sense of olfaction seems to play a key role.
Highlights
The olfactory system provides many functions for humans, influencing ingestive behavior, increasing awareness of environmental hazards and social communication
Does olfaction enrich information from other sensory systems, like the visual, tactile or auditory senses? Does it allow us to experience the world more deeply? Or does the olfactory sense possess functions of it own, which cannot be fulfilled by other systems? A number of extensive studies from various countries indicate that approximately 15–20% of the population exhibits some olfactory loss, and that 2.5–5% exhibit functional anosmia
Materials The questionnaire intended to obtain information about daily life functions related to olfaction
Summary
The olfactory system provides many functions for humans, influencing ingestive behavior, increasing awareness of environmental hazards and social communication (for overview see [1]). One more recent study [3] indicated that 3.8% of the population exhibit severe olfactory loss. These differences in numbers seem to relate to differences in the interpretation of test results and differences in the study design [3,4,5,6,7,8]. Despite these differences, it appears that a relatively large portion of the general population exhibits olfactory loss. How important is it for humans to have an intact sense of smell? Is it even dispensable, at least in the Western world?
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