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Canadians who have experienced COVID for a long time lack a sense of smell and taste

When Julie Wright and her family had breakfast on Christmas morning, her meal looked exactly like what she ate exactly a year ago. The only difference now is that she cannot taste her food.

“I can say strange times [whether] something is supposed to be sweet, sour, salty, spicy, but can’t tell you what I’m tasting,” she wrote in an email to CTVNews.ca last week. “Some things have no taste at all… imagine you can’t taste ice cream anymore, [or] That first morning sip of coffee?”

The 40-year-old mother from Newcastle, Ont., started losing her taste buds a few months after contracting COVID-19 in December 2021. At the time, Wright had had two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, she said. .

After talking to her doctor, she was diagnosed with persistent COVID and was eventually referred to a clinic in Toronto. Wright is one of dozens of Canadians who have contacted CTVNews.ca to describe their symptoms of prolonged COVID. All emailed responses have not been independently verified.

Also known as the post-COVID-19 state, the World Health Organization (WHO) defines persistent COVID as “the continuation or development of new symptoms three months after initial SARS-CoV-2 infection “. Symptoms must persist for at least two months and cannot be attributed to other causes.

More than 200 symptoms are associated with persistent COVID, and not everyone with the disease will experience the same symptoms. According to the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), common symptoms include fatigue, memory problems, and shortness of breath, although loss of taste and smell has also been reported in people with COVID. prolonged, said Dr. Kieran Quinn, a clinical scientist. at the University of Toronto and the Sinai Health System.

There are several working theories about how long COVID affects the body, Quinn said, one of which points to uncontrolled inflammation that can occur after a COVID-19 infection. This can cause damage to cells in different parts of the body, such as organs.

Quinn told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview on Wednesday: “If you have damage in your brain and memory centers, then you may have memory problems that can be described as brain fog for example.

This inflammation can also damage the nerves that are involved in a person’s ability to taste and smell. Research on how COVID-19 affects a person’s ability to taste is still limited. According to a study published in July 2022, impaired taste could be a result of SARS-CoV-2 binding to receptors in the salivary glands or mucosal cells in the mouth, which can lead to inflammation and decreased taste buds sensitivity.

Inflammation can also damage the nerves that carry information from the nose to the brain. A recent study conducted by scientists in the United States found that people who experienced a persistent loss of smell after being infected with COVID-19 had inflammation in the tissue in the nose, which contains nerve cells. smell.

As a result, some may not be able to smell anything, a condition known as anosmia. Others may suffer from parosmia, a distorted sense of smell that can make ordinary smells unpleasant. Scents are often described as burning, rotten, or chemical. The condition can also affect a person’s ability to eat certain foods by causing nausea.

There is no known drug or treatment to specifically address the loss of smell or taste caused by COVID-19, Quinn said, although data from researchers in California shows that patients may soon feel relief.

LOSE FLAVOR OR DIRECTIONS MONTHLY FOR SOME PEOPLE

Sylvie Hanes became paranoid after contracting COVID-19 for the second time in April 2022. At the time, Hanes said she had received four doses of the coronavirus vaccine.

“[My doctor] Hanes told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview Wednesday.

Sylvie Hanes appears in this photo.

The 62-year-old woman from Ottawa said the smell of meats like beef and pork when cooking made her nauseous immediately, making her not want to eat these foods.

“It’s been 8 months without beef, pork [or] sausage,” she said. “Anything that smells like meat, I have to stay away… just thinking about it makes me sick.”

Therefore, she will avoid going to restaurants or friends’ houses where meat is served. She also avoids buying certain meat products when grocery shopping, she said. Although the nausea she experienced wasn’t as intense as it was a few months ago, Hanes said it still persists to this day. However, the feeling of nausea did not apply to other foods and her taste buds were not impaired, she said.

Changes in a person’s taste and smell are common in people with COVID-19, with an average of 40 to 50% of patients reporting these symptoms around the world.

Data shows that most people will eventually recover. According to an analysis involving 267 adult patients who lost their sense of taste and/or smell following COVID-19 infection, most people made a full or partial recovery about two years after infection. However, 7.5% still have not regained taste and/or smell two years after contracting COVID-19.

COVID-19 A ‘Whole-body Illness’: EXPERT

Yet another symptom experienced by some long-time COVID patients is tinnitus, which is characterized by ringing or other noises in the ears. Inflammation of the nerves in the inner ear that connect to the hearing centers in the brain can cause noises that aren’t caused by outside sounds.

“That ringing is simply a sign that the nerve isn’t working properly,” Quinn said.

When looking at these effects on basic human senses, there seems to be a link between COVID-19 and the nervous system, Quinn said. Although SARS-CoV-2 mainly infects the lungs, the ACE-2 receptor used by the virus to enter cells can be present in many tissues and organ systems, he said.

“That’s why we think persistent COVID is a systemic disease, it’s not just a lung disease,” Quinn said. “It’s definitely a systemic disease.”

Nicole Rogers contracted COVID-19 in March 2020. Despite a mild infection, she said she later developed persistent COVID, experiencing symptoms such as extreme fatigue and ringing in her ears. In August 2020, she went to a hearing clinic and was eventually fitted with a hearing aid.

In this photo, Nicole Rogers appears with her husband and two children.

“They said I had a mild hearing loss. [in] my left ear,” she told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview Wednesday. “It reduces tinnitus by about half and makes it tolerable.”

The 50-year-old woman from Langley, BC Rogers said, although the condition is not as debilitating as chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and the cognitive problems she has had since. 23 years as a teacher.

“I am extremely active, never sit down, and now I am buying a wheelchair,” she said. “Most days I can’t get out of the house, I’m so dizzy… I can’t even stand in the shower anymore.”

In November 2020, Rogers was admitted to an extended COVID clinic in Vancouver but was later discharged. She has had a dose of the COVID-19 vaccine and is taking low-dose naltrexone to control her CFS, she said.

“It’s an invisible disease,” she said.

‘Nobody seems to know the ANSWER’

Based on data released by Statistics Canada in October, about 15% of Canadian adults with COVID-19 said they were still experiencing symptoms for at least three months after being infected. Even so, there is currently no way to definitively diagnose or treat persistent COVID, according to PHAC.

A persistent range of COVID-related symptoms, Quinn said, can make diagnosing the condition “a major challenge” for health care providers and patients. Symptoms often occur not only with persistent COVID but also associated with other conditions. This could lead to some differences in how doctors determine if someone has had long-term COVID, he said.

“The information gap is a big problem for us… no one really knows what causes COVID to last,” Quinn said. “As health care practitioners, we must make the best decisions possible for our patients when it comes to imperfect evidence.”

In the meantime, treatment continues to focus on helping patients manage symptoms, Quinn said.

After being admitted to a lengthy COVID clinic in June 2022, Wright worked with various specialists, including speech therapists and dietitians, to manage her symptoms. , including memory loss, difficulty concentrating, and extreme fatigue. Along with lingering COVID, Wright also had a heart defect called a mitral aortic valve and had to take medication to control cholesterol levels.

She said that by the end of September, she was discharged from the hospital despite continuing to have symptoms.

“No one seems to know the answer,” she told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview Wednesday. “Painful.”

In this photo, Julie Wright appears with her dog.

The continuing lack of information surrounding the condition is the hardest part of living with COVID long-term, says Wright.

“You just want to know if it’s going to end or it’s going to get better,” she said. “That’s what scares me the most. I can handle no taste, I can handle no smell… It’s not knowing that really drives me crazy.”

Still, online communities that support people with long-term COVID-19 are a useful resource, Wright, Hanes and Rogers said.

They said Facebook groups for people with specific illnesses like parosmia or persistent COVID in general helped all three women cope with their symptoms.

The Canadian Long-distance COVID Support Group was founded in 2020 by Susie Goulding and currently has more than 18,000 members. The group, she said, allows Canadians with longstanding COVID to connect with others who also have the disease, to better understand the disease and spread awareness.

“A lot of people don’t get the support they need from family, friends and the medical community, and that feels like a boycott,” she told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview. on Thursday. “We are a lifeline for everyone.”

The group allows members to share their advice and acts as a reminder that anyone living with COVID long-term is not alone, said Goulding, who also fell ill after COVID-19, said. The group also connects people with living experience with long-time COVID researchers for ongoing research.

“The more we collaborate and have our voices heard, the more important it is to produce meaningful research,” she said.

With files from CTVNews.ca writer Alexandra Mae Jones, CNN



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