- An estimated 3 million people in the UK suffer from a severe loss of smell
- But new jabs help restore smell by encouraging nerve cells to regeneration
- After a single injection four of five test subjects said their small had come back
Jabs of blood into the nose may offer new hope to those who have lost their sense of smell. A study found that, after a single injection, patients were able to detect strong odours including coffee and garlic.
After their fourth injection, most of the five study participants had their ability to smell totally restored.
An estimated 3 million people in this country suffer from anosmia, or a severe loss of smell. It occurs as a result of damage to the olfactory sensory nerve cells located in a small patch of tissue, the olfactory epithelium, which is found inside the nose, 7cm up from the nostrils.
Anosmia happens when the olfactory sensory nerve cells are damaged
Chemical molecules that carry smells dissolve in mucus in this area — receptor nerve cells then send signals via the olfactory nerves to the olfactory cortex in the brain. But if the receptor nerve cells are damaged, they do not readily regenerate.
There are numerous causes of a loss of smell: from chronic sinusitis to nasal polyps and head injury. It’s more common among the elderly, as nerve cells in the nose degenerate with age.
The new jabs work by encouraging the nerve cells to regenerate, according to the researchers from Semmelweis University, Budapest. They contain platelet-rich plasma (PRP). Plasma is the liquid part of blood — it is made up of red cells, white cells, and platelets. In turn, platelets consist of proteins called growth factors, which play an important role in the growth of new tissue.
Platelets are key to the new treatment. First, blood is taken from a patient’s arm and spun in a machine to separate the platelets and plasma — these are then injected (under local anaesthetic) into the smell-related tissue at the top of each nostril.
The jabs were tested on five patients with anosmia: all had previously tried treatments such as steroids, oral antihistamines and nasal wash for at least three months without improvement.
They were each given four PRP injections over six months and, according to the results, published in the International Journal of Tinnitus Research, after the first jab they could smell strong odours, and after the second they all could smell moderately strong odours, including orange, oregano and basil.
Vibrating pen could end painful trips to the dentist
The pen would act as a distraction to the sensation of a needle going in
A pen that vibrates could reduce pain caused by dental treatment.
The pen is placed near where the painkilling dental jab is given, and works by drowning out, or acting as a distraction to, the sensation of the needle going in.
Following a trial at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine, in the U.S., 60 people reported that they experienced less pain, unpleasantness and difficulty enduring the injection when the device — the DentalVibe Injection Comfort System — was used, according to a report in the Compendium of Continuing Education in Dentistry.
After the last injection, four of the five said their smell had completely come back, while the fifth could smell many, but not all, odours. None of them lost the sense of smell during the one-year follow-up period, suggesting the effects are long-lasting.
Commenting on the treatment, Professor Jaydip Ray, clinical director and ENT consultant at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals and Sheffield Children’s Hospital, said: ‘This is an unusual experimental treatment, which seems to have given a good result and hope to a small number of patients with complete loss of smell. However, this needs to be tested further with a more rigorous study design before it can become widely available.’
When antibiotics given in hospital make you ill
Up to 20 per cent of patients have an adverse reaction to antibiotics
As many as a fifth of hospital patients given antibiotics have an adverse reaction to them — and in a fifth of those cases, the patients actually didn’t need the drugs in the first place, reports the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.
In the U.S. study, doctors from Johns Hopkins Hospital, in Baltimore, examined the medical records of nearly 1,500 patients and found the most common antibiotic reactions were gastrointestinal, kidney and blood abnormalities. Many of the patients had to spend longer in hospital as a result of such complications.
The researchers suggested patients should speak to their doctors about potential side-effects and how to recognise them.