Abstract
Background/Objective: During the COVID-19 pandemic, smell and taste disorders emerged as key non-respiratory symptoms. Due to widespread presence of the disease and to difficult objective testing of positive persons, the use of short surveys became mandatory. Most of the existing resources are focused on smell, very few on taste or trigeminal chemosensation called chemesthesis. However, it is possible that the three submodalities are affected differently by COVID-19.Methods: We prepared a short survey (TaSCA) that can be administered at the telephone or through online resources to explore chemosensation. It is composed of 11 items on olfaction, taste, and chemesthesis, in order to discriminate the three modalities. We avoided abstract terms, and the use of semiquantitative scales because older patients may be less engaged. Statistical handling included descriptive statistics, Pearson's chi-squared test and cluster analysis.Results: The survey was completed by 83 persons (60 females and 23 males), which reported diagnosis of COVID-19 by clinical (n = 7) or molecular (n = 18) means, the others being non-COVID subjects. Cluster analysis depicted the existence of two groups, one containing mostly asymptomatic and one mostly symptomatic subjects. All swab-positive persons fell within this second group. Only one item, related to trigeminal temperature perception, did not discriminate between the two groups.Conclusions: These preliminary results indicate that TaSCA may be used to easily track chemosensory symptoms related to COVID-19 in an agile way, giving a picture of three different chemosensory modalities.
Highlights
After the first weeks of SARS-CoV2 spreading [1] and the worldwide dissemination of COVID-19 pandemic, it became clear that the virus is able to affect different organs, while giving the most dismal outcomes in the case of respiratory tract infection [2]
Other symptoms emerged as associated to the infection, including the loss of smell termed anosmia [3,4,5], whose sudden onset appeared as a typical feature of the COVID-19 disease [6, 7]
Eighty-three persons completed the survey: 60 females and 23 males. 56 were asymptomatic, 7 had a COVID-19 clinical diagnosis based on symptoms, 18 had a SARS-CoV2 positive nasopharyngeal swab and 2 self-reported sudden olfactory loss but when the swab test become available, it turned out to be negative
Summary
After the first weeks of SARS-CoV2 spreading [1] and the worldwide dissemination of COVID-19 pandemic, it became clear that the virus is able to affect different organs, while giving the most dismal outcomes in the case of respiratory tract infection [2]. Other symptoms emerged as associated to the infection, including the loss of smell termed anosmia [3,4,5], whose sudden onset appeared as a typical feature of the COVID-19 disease [6, 7]. Other viruses may affect the ability to smell, in these cases the loss of olfactory function is smoother and associated to various degree of nasal symptoms, like running nose [8], while in the case of COVID-19, the loss of smell may appear in the absence of any other symptom, often in a sudden and dramatic way. While the loss of smell is the most apparent sign of chemosensory involvement and can be regarded as a predictor of COVID-19 [10,11,12,13,14] taste loss (ageusia) may be present, and in some cases the trigeminal chemical sense [15] called chemesthesis is involved [14, 16]
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