Among the early signs ofAlzheimer difficulties in recognizing familiar smells in common contexts, such as that of soap in the shower, a daily gesture for millions of people, are rightly included.
Dr. Davangere Devanand, holder of the chair of psychiatry and neurology at Columbia University in New York, explains it, according to which it is not so much a simple problem of olfactory perception, but rather a deficit that involves the areas used for the conservation of memory and to the association between memories and the sensations that should stimulate them: a sort of anticipation of the problems connected both to Alzheimer’s and to various forms of dementia, often mistaken for consequences of tiredness or stress. After these first alarm bells it would be a good idea to carry out more in-depth tests, starting from blood analysis to cerebrospinal fluid analysis, up to magnetic resonance imaging.
The difficulty in mnemonic associating a odor a habitual gesture, just like recognizing that of soap in the shower, can reveal the beginning of a cognitive deterioration, and in fact the failure of olfactory tests is also one of the first signs of Alzheimer’s.
In his study later published in “Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association”, Dr. Davangere Devenend proposed an olfactory test based on the recognition of 12 odors to 647 volunteers without established dementia: the participants, followed by the Mayo Clinic Study of Aging, were evaluated over an average period of 8.1 years. The Brief Smell Identification Test is divided into twelve multiple choice questions: there are as many common smells, namely soap, leather, lilac, smoke, gas, rose, cherry, cloves, strawberry, menthol, pineapple, lemon, which the participant discovers from time to time by selecting the answer from four options.
In the scorewhich obviously ranges from 0 to 12 (from -0.25 to -2 depending on the wrong answer), the severity of the situation is assessed: the sense of smell is considered intact with a number equal to or greater than 9, compromised with a number less than 8 but greater than 3, while there is talk of anosmia below the threshold of 3. The results were then associated with those of the cognitive test Blessed Information Memory Concentration Test and those of specific instrumental tests such as PET amyloid or magnetic resonance imaging: by cross-referencing the information, the researchers were able to evaluate the quality of the data that emerged thanks to the Brief Smell Identification Test.
The BSIT was in fact able to predict cognitive decline, identifying 102 cases of deterioration and 34 of dementia and thus proving to be a valid, more economical and less invasive solution for identifying the onset of cognitive impairment in advance.
problems of this kind. “Using a simple smell test can predict cognitive decline”says Devanand, explaining how even a simple difficulty in the shower can become revealing.
