Please don't smirk if I tell you that I don't smell anymore.
Try this one on for size. This is the first serious reference to olafactory
deficits I have seen.
Ron Reiner (49/2)
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Loss of smell may offer clues about Parkinson's
LONDON (Reuter) - Most patients with Parkinson's disease
have trouble smelling, which could offer clues to the cause and
diagnosis of the disease, British researchers reported Monday.
Neurologist Christopher Hawkes and colleagues at Leeds
General Infirmary said tests comparing 96 Parkinson's patients
with 96 healthy volunteers showed measurable damage to the
olfactory, or smelling, system.
Smell was impaired in 70 to 90 percent of Parkinson's
patients, with damage in the olfactory bulb, which links the
nasal passages and the brain, they found.
``Odors that were most readily misidentified were lemon,
pizza, wintergreen, rose and clove,'' they wrote in a report in
the British Medical Association's Journal of Neurology,
Neurosurgery and Psychiatry.
Smell tests or inspection of the olfactory bulb could be
used to help diagnose Parkinson's and other brain-damaging
diseases such as Alzheimer's, they suggested.
Alzheimer's, the brain-wasting illness that causes dementia
and death, is also known to affect smell.
But how can a brain disease do this?
``One possibility is that Parkinson's disease and perhaps
Alzheimer's disease might be caused by a virus or chemical agent
that gains entry to the central nervous system via the nose,''
wrote the researchers.
They cited reports that showed the herpes virus could get
into the brain through the nose.
It could also be that the loss of smell is simply a
progression of the brain damage caused by Parkinson's.
Then again there could be a genetic component. Some patients
with Parkinson's have a defect in the P-450 gene, which in
monkeys is found in large concentrations in the olfactory bulb.
U.S. figures show that Parkinson's is the second most common
brain-wasting disease after Alzheimer's, affecting about one
percent of the population. It is marked by a shortage of the
neurotransmitter dopamine, a chemical important for carrying
messages between nerve cells affecting movement.
Victims, who cannot be cured, can suffer shaking, loss of
speech and other symptoms.
