Could a sniff test using smelly stuff at home pick up COVID-19?

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2022-04-08 09:00

International

Researchers have designed an online tool to assess people’s ability to sniff out smelly household items like cumin, basil and vinegar. Early use by over 13,000 participants, including 462 who were COVID-positive, found the tool was 79 per cent sensitive at detecting COVID, comparing well to RAT tests. Importantly, the tool was able to pick up infection in asymptomatic people. The team says though this wasn’t a clinical study, the tool could offer a new way to screen for infection, and its data may shed light on what’s going on in the brain with COVID-related smell problems.

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Research Springer Nature, Web page

Journal/
conference: Communications Medicine

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Weizmann Institute of Science, Bezalel Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Edith Wolfson Medical Center, Tel Aviv University (Israel), Karolinska Institutet and Stockholm University (Sweden), University of Oslo (Norway), University of Tokyo (Japan), Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown (Portugal), University of Florence (Italy)

Funder: This study was supported by a Weizmann CoronaVirus Emergency Fund grant from Miel de Botton and a Weizmann CoronaVirus Emergency Fund grant from Sonia T. Marschak. The funders had no role in the design, analysis, or reporting of this manuscript

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