United States: Research indicates the nose serves as a tool to identify individuals with dementia or Alzheimer’s disease early symptoms, as reported by HealthDay.
People who have developed mild cognitive impairment before dementia and Alzheimer’s disease show decreased performance in peel-and-sniff assessments according to research appearing March 24 in Scientific Reports.
Science reports that the at-home test provides the first warning of potential brain function deprecation according to researchers.
Smell as an Early Indicator of Cognitive Decline
Researchers led by senior neurologist Dr. Mark Albers have strived to create and verify a budget-friendly home testing method that supports future Alzheimer’s disease research and therapeutic developments, as per his statement in the official release.
Research by Albers shows that early cognitive impairment detection enables healthcare providers to identify people at risk of Alzheimer’s disease before memory symptoms start to appear.
Participants utilize their smell to evaluate odor labels placed on cards in order to determine scent identification along with memory and discrimination abilities.
Each participant smells an odor followed by selecting its name from among four potential choices. The next part of the assessment requires participants to indicate their certainty level about the scents they selected.
Key Findings
A group of 127 participants with healthy brains took the test which demonstrated that odor identification and memory skills naturally wane as we grow older.
Research results indicate that 19 participants with mild cognitive impairment scored worse on the smell test than regular seniors without cognitive decline.
A Reliable Test Across Languages
The test produced comparable outcomes for both English and Spanish participants and research assistants providing guidance did not affect the test performance, as reported by HealthDay.
“Our results suggest that olfactory testing could be used in clinical research settings in different languages and among older adults to predict neurodegenerative disease and development of clinical symptoms,” Albers said.
Future studies will verify this test alongside its integration with different tests used for evaluating dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, researchers observed.