Coincidence of COVID-19 epidemic and olfactory dysfunction outbreak

  1. Seyed Hamidreza Bagheri
  2. Alimohamad Asghari
  3. Mohammad Farhadi
  4. Ahmad Reza Shamshiri
  5. Ali Kabir
  6. Seyed Kamran Kamrava
  7. Maryam Jalessi
  8. Alireza Mohebbi
  9. Rafieh Alizadeh
  10. Ali Asghar Honarmand
  11. Babak Ghalehbaghi
  12. Alireza Salimi

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Abstract

Background

Recent surge of olfactory dysfunction in patients who were referred to ENT clinics and concurrent COVID-19epidemic in Iran motivated us to evaluate anosmic/hyposmic patients to find any relation between these two events.

Methods

This is a cross-sectional study with an online checklist on voluntary cases in all provinces of Iran between the 12th and 17th March, 2020. Cases was defined as self-reported anosmia/hyposmia in responders fewer than 4 weeks later (from start the of COVID-19 epidemic in Iran). Variables consist of clinical presentations, related past medical history, family history of recent respiratory tract infection and hospitalization.

Results

In this study 10069 participants aged 32.5±8.6 (7-78) years, 71.13% female and 81.68% non-smoker completed online checklist. They reported 10.55% a history of a trip out of home town and 1.1% hospitalization due to respiratory problems recently. From family members 12.17% had a history of severe respiratory disease in recent days and 48.23% had anosmia/hyposmia.

Correlation between the number of olfactory disorder and reported COVID-19 patients in all 31 provinces till 16th March 2020 was highly significant (Spearman correlation coefficient=0.87, p-Value<0.001). The onset of anosmia was sudden in 76.24% and till the time of filling the questionnaire in 60.90% of patients decreased sense of smell was constant. Also 83.38 of this patients had decreased taste sensation in association with anosmia.

Conclusions

It seems that we have a surge in outbreak of olfactory dysfunction happened in Iran during the COVID-19 epidemic. The exact mechanism of anosmia/hyposmia in COVID-19 patients’ needs further investigations.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.03.23.20041889: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: The study was approved by the ethics committee of Iran University of Medical Science.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Another limitation of this study is that no definite test for COVID-19 infection was included. As this is an online survey, the main goal was to confirm the outbreak of anosmia during the COVID-19 epidemic. As the study was self-reported, we used some of questions to check others to increase the questionnaire response validity. Based on the findings of this study it seems that we have a surge in outbreak of olfactory dysfunction happened in Iran during the COVID-19 epidemic, that correlates with the number of patients infected with COVID-19 across the country. As olfactory dysfunction can affect the quality of life in affected patients, it needs to be assessed worldwide by further clinical studies to find out the exact correlation, pathogenesis, prognosis, and any correlation between disease severity and olfactory dysfunction.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.03.23.20041889v1 on medRxiv