{"doi":"10.1093/chemse/bjad020","title":"Covid-19 affects taste independent of taste–smell confusions: results from a combined chemosensory home test and online survey from a large global cohort","abstract":"People often confuse smell loss with taste loss, so it is unclear how much gustatory function is reduced in patients self-reporting taste loss. Our pre-registered cross-sectional study design included an online survey in 12 languages with instructions for self-administering chemosensory tests with 10 household items. Between June 2020 and March 2021, 10,953 individuals participated. Of these, 5,225 self-reported a respiratory illness and were grouped based on their reported COVID test results: COVID-positive (COVID+, N = 3,356), COVID-negative (COVID-, N = 602), and COVID unknown for those waiting for a test result (COVID?, N = 1,267). The participants who reported no respiratory illness were grouped by symptoms: sudden smell/taste changes (STC, N = 4,445), other symptoms excluding smell or taste changes (OthS, N = 832), and no symptoms (NoS, N = 416). Taste, smell, and oral irritation intensities and self-assessed abilities were rated on visual analog scales. Compared to the NoS group, COVID+ was associated with a 21% reduction in taste (95% confidence interval (CI): 15-28%), 47% in smell (95% CI: 37-56%), and 17% in oral irritation (95% CI: 10-25%) intensity. There were medium to strong correlations between perceived intensities and self-reported abilities (r = 0.84 for smell, r = 0.68 for taste, and r = 0.37 for oral irritation). Our study demonstrates that COVID-19-positive individuals report taste dysfunction when self-tested with stimuli that have little to none olfactory components. Assessing the smell and taste intensity of household items is a promising, cost-effective screening tool that complements self-reports and may help to disentangle taste loss from smell loss. However, it does not replace standardized validated psychophysical tests.","journal":"Chemical Senses","year":2023,"id":328326,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":23,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9523,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":250137,"name":"Javier Albayay","orcid":"0000-0003-2119-6316","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1049743,"name":"Richard Höchenberger","orcid":"0000-0002-0380-4798","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":231549,"name":"Surabhi Bhutani","orcid":"0000-0002-4320-0868","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":250154,"name":"Sanne Boesveldt","orcid":"0000-0002-9560-6093","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":615,"name":"Niko A. Busch","orcid":"0000-0003-4837-0345","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":250109,"name":"Ilja Croijmans","orcid":"0000-0001-9812-0040","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":231546,"name":"Keiland W Cooper","orcid":"0000-0002-0358-9645","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":250155,"name":"Jasper H. B. de Groot","orcid":"0000-0002-2831-3557","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":231548,"name":"Michael C. Farruggia","orcid":"0000-0002-5306-6754","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":250110,"name":"Alexander Wieck Fjældstad","orcid":"0000-0002-9135-6920","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":250151,"name":"John E. Hayes","orcid":"0000-0001-9065-6326","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":250150,"name":"Thomas Hummel","orcid":"0000-0001-9713-0183","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":231551,"name":"Paule V. Joseph","orcid":"0000-0002-1198-9622","position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":250158,"name":"Tatiana Laktionova","orcid":"0000-0002-9753-023X","position":14,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":250162,"name":"Thierry Thomas‐Danguin","orcid":"0000-0002-9756-355X","position":15,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":250102,"name":"Maria G. Veldhuizen","orcid":"0000-0001-8375-7719","position":16,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":250136,"name":"Vera V. Voznessenskaya","orcid":"0000-0002-6138-2060","position":17,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":231553,"name":"Valentina Parma","orcid":"0000-0003-0276-7072","position":18,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":250105,"name":"Marta Yanina Pepino","orcid":"0000-0003-2381-1095","position":19,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":250101,"name":"Kathrin Ohla","orcid":"0000-0001-7265-0449","position":20,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1049742,"name":"Ha Nguyen","orcid":"0000-0001-6128-8667","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":53,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:08:52.196069Z","pmid":"37350646","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}