Meu Primeiro Trabalho
Eu mesmo
3/4/2021
Primeiro Trabalho de Estatística - Rafael Marques Guazelli
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Barrie Smith was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in his 50s, but 18 years before he was given his diagnosis, he developed a very strange and permanent symptom. One day he detected “a strong smoky smell, like burning wires”, he says. Since then, he has never smelt anything again. At the time, flummoxed, Smith’s doctor attributed the loss of his sense of smell to his scuba diving, as deep diving is known to sometimes cause smell impairments.
If only the doctor was right.
Smell loss can have sinister origins beyond scuba diving, and in Smith’s case~, that proved to be true. In today’s world, most would automatically attribute the loss of smell to Covid-19, but it is also a common symptom of neurodegenerative diseases, including Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease. Research has found that up to 38% of those suffering from Multiple Sclerosis while almost half of older adults diagnosed with dementia showed signs of smell loss five years earlier. In Parkinson’s disease 45-96% of patients show smell impairment.
For years, smell loss – or anosmia as it is also known – has been largely ignored as a marker for diseases such as Parkinson’s, but now some scientists believe using it as a tool of diagnosis could come with big advantages.
The pathology of diseases such as Parkinson’s is present in the olfactory area of the brain long before other areas, and this is thought to be the reason why Smith lost his sense of smell 18 years before his first tremor. An accurate smell test might have identified his disease almost two decades before his official diagnosis, and that could potentially have given him much more time to slow the disease’s progression.
