(ANSA) - ROME, 02 FEB - Use candies to find out if there is a loss of smell and taste linked to Covid-19.
This is the simple and relatively low-cost method proposed by researchers at Ohio State University, who received $ 305,000 in funding from the National Institutes of Health with the aim of developing easy-to-implement strategies that can identify people potentially infected with SARS-CoV-2.
While symptoms such as fever, chills, cough and muscle aches vary widely among Covid-19 patients, an estimated 86% of people who test positive report a loss of smell, "making it a much better predictor. , especially if it is a sudden loss "highlights one of the scholars who will lead the project, Professor Christopher Simons.
Eight flavors of solid colored hard candies will be produced to test the effectiveness of the method.
"Asking people to identify flavors by smelling and tasting candy allows for a sophisticated evaluation of the function of two pathways - through the nose and the back of the throat - by which our sense of smell helps tell us what we're eating," Simons specifies.
Furthermore, it is difficult to resist the idea of sweets as a scientific screening tool.
"Who doesn't like candy? It's an ideal stimulus for it to work," continues the scholar.
The first phase of the Ohio State project is validating the use of candy against already validated methods and the preliminary results are promising.
In the second phase of the project, the team plans to follow around 2,800 people for 90 days.
University students are the main source of recruitment for the study.
Participants will be asked to smell and consume a hard candy once a day and to log into an app to report what they smell and taste, not only by identifying the flavor, but also by evaluating its intensity.
If they report a sudden drop in both directions, they will receive a message informing them of the need to isolate themselves and take a Covid test.
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