AbScent/ckos community contribute to major new research paper

A new research paper has just been published in the journal Rhinology that sheds some light on the use of smell training by people with smell loss.

Professor Hummel and Li Zeitan of the Technical University in Dresden, Germany enrolled 450 members of our community to consider their use of smell training in a longitudinal study. This kind of study looks at a beginning point, and then another survey in the future, hoping to get feedback from the original participants in early 2023 and find out how people have done in the last two years. Have they recovered? Have they been using smell training, and if so, how is that going?

This paper, however, looks at information derived from the first questionnaire, the beginning point of the logitudinal study. They found that the people who started smell training were those who were motivated by a loss in their quality of life. The people who “stuck with it” were likely to be those who noticed some progress.

The average time spent smell training was (unfortunately!) only four weeks. When we see results like this, we know that we need to try harder to get people who are suffering with their smell loss to continue with the practice, because it is beneficial.

The study also found that among people in older age groups, there were many who were not familiar with smell training, and could benefit from more information on the subject. In younger age groups, there was less confidence that smell training would benefit them.

You can read and download the paper here.