The Nose Knows: Can Smell Be A Marker Of MS Progression?

Research Summary: Smelling multiple sclerosis: Different qualities of olfactory function reflect either inflammatory activity or neurodegeneration

WHAT?

A research study investigating whether specific problems with the sense of smell are associated with disease progression in multiple sclerosis.

WHERE?

The research was conducted by a team from the Medical University of Innsbruck in Austria.

WHEN?

This article was published online in the Multiple Sclerosis Journal on November 22, 2018.

FACT #1:  Many people living with multiple sclerosis report that they have problems with their sense of smell.

FACT #2:  Multiple sclerosis is known to involve issues caused by both inflammation and degeneration.  It is thought that the early parts of the disease are more inflammatory, whereas the later parts of the disease are more to do with neurodegeneration.

FACT #3:  Certain problems with the sense of smell seem to occur later in the disease process or during progressive MS, but whether they can be used as ‘markers’ of this progression is unknown.

FINDING #1:  Olfactory threshold (tested by the ability to select 1 object that had a smell out of a total of 3 objects) was linked to inflammatory relapse activity.

FINDING #2:  Odour identification (selecting specific smells from a mixture) and odour discrimination (distinguishing the odd one out between 3 objects that all had a smell, but where one was different) were linked to neurodegeneration and not relapse-activity.

THOUGHT:  This study presents a potentially interesting and easy way of being able to group people living with MS by their disease state.  This could have benefits for research studies and may be used in the future to assess whether it could be used to help predict disease outcomes.

THOUGHT:  The results are preliminary and will need larger studies to confirm.  There are also a number of factors that may impact on the results (such as treatments being used, smoking status, etc) and the exact nature of how they effect these measurements need to be properly understood.

The full abstract for this study can be read here.