Anosmia

Clinic

• Also known as smell blindness, is the loss of the ability to detect one or more smells.
• Anosmia may be temporary or permanent. It differs from hyposmia, which is a decreased sensitivity to some or all smells.

Causes

• Inflammation of the nasal mucosa, blockage of nasal passages or
• Destruction of one temporal lobe.

When anosmia is caused by inflammatory changes in the nasal passageways, it is treated simply by reducing inflammation.

• It can be caused by chronic meningitis and neurosyphilis that would increase intracranial pressure over a long period of time.
• Ciliopathy, including ciliopathy due to primary ciliary dyskinesia.

List of causes

Dynamic	Dynamic
Peripheral	Central	Static
Upper respiratory tract infection Sinusitis Common cold COV-19 Hay fever Asthma or allergy	Dementia with Lewy bodies Multiple sclerosis Fibromyalgia Cushing's syndrome Idiopathic hypogonadotropic hypogonadism Primary amoebic meningoencephalitis Parkinson's disease Alzheimer's disease Myasthenia gravis	Nasal polyps Hypothyroidism Head trauma, damage to the ethmoid bone Tumors of the frontal lobe Antibiotics Hypoglycaemia Exposure to hydrogen sulfide (H 2S) by paralysis of the olfactory nerve. Exposure to a chemical that burns the inside of the nose Radiation therapy to the head and neck Chronic atrophic rhinitis Toxins (especially acrylates, methacrylates and cadmium)

• Diabetes
• Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
• Long term alcoholism
• Stroke
• Epilepsy
• Liver or kidney disease
• Kallmann syndrome
• Primary ciliary dyskinesia
• Post-perfusion syndrome
• Laryngectomy with permanent tracheostomy
• Esthesioneuroblastoma is an exceedingly rare cancerous tumor that originates in or near the olfactory nerve. Symptoms are anosmia (loss of sense of smell) often accompanied by chronic sinusitis.
• Intranasal drug use
• Aspirin-exacerbated respiratory disease (AERD), also known as Samter's triad
• Foster Kennedy syndrome
• Cadmium poisoning
• Smoking
• Neurotropic virus
• Schizophrenia
• Pernicious anemia
• Zinc deficiency
• Bell's Palsy or nerve paralysis and damage
• Idiopathic intracranial hypertension
• Suprasellar meningioma
• Refsum's disease
• Adrenergic agonists or withdrawal from alpha blockers (vasoconstriction)
• Sarcoidosis
• Zinc-based intranasal cold products, including remedies labelled as "homeopathic"
• Paget's disease of bone
• Cerebral aneurysm
• Granulomatosis with polyangiitis
• Snakebite
• Idiopathic anosmia (cause cannot be determined)

Miasms

• COV-19
• HSV-1, HSV-2 (Ref: Landis BN, Vodicka J, Hummel T. Olfactory dysfunction following herpetic meningoencephalitis. J Neurol. 2010 Mar;257(3):439-43. doi: 10.1007/s00415-009-5344-7. Epub 2009 Oct 10. PMID: 19820982.
• NVCJD (Ref: REUBER M, AL-DIN ASN, BABORIE A, et al, New variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease presenting with loss of taste and smell, Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry 2001;71:412-413.
• CJD (Ref: Sporadic CJD Found in Olfactory Cilia, Medscape)