{"doi":"10.1101/2020.06.14.20131128","title":"Innate immune signaling in the olfactory epithelium reduces odorant receptor levels: modeling transient smell loss in COVID-19 patients","abstract":"Post-infectious anosmias typically follow death of olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs) with a months-long recovery phase associated with parosmias. While profound anosmia is the leading symptom associated with COVID-19 infection, many patients regain olfactory function within days to weeks without distortions. Here, we demonstrate that sterile induction of anti-viral type I interferon signaling in the mouse olfactory epithelium is associated with diminished odor discrimination and reduced odor-evoked local field potentials. RNA levels of all class I, class II, and TAAR odorant receptors are markedly reduced in OSNs in a non-cell autonomous manner. We find that people infected with COVID-19 rate odors with lower intensities and have odor discrimination deficits relative to people that tested negative for COVID-19. Taken together, we propose that inflammatory-mediated loss of odorant receptor expression with preserved circuit integrity accounts for the profound anosmia and rapid recovery of olfactory function without parosmias caused by COVID-19.","journal":"medRxiv","year":2020,"id":118576,"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":58,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9478,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":551560,"name":"Luxiang Cao","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":551561,"name":"Gregory T. Rickenbacher","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":550985,"name":"Eric Benz","orcid":"0000-0003-2468-3697","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":336255,"name":"Colin Magdamo","orcid":"0000-0001-8965-4630","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":550986,"name":"Liliana Ramírez Gómez","orcid":"0000-0001-8869-3240","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":550987,"name":"Eric H. Holbrook","orcid":"0000-0002-7632-2204","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":551562,"name":"Alefiya D. Albers","orcid":null,"position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":551563,"name":"Rose Gallagher","orcid":null,"position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":280809,"name":"M. Brandon Westover","orcid":"0000-0003-4803-312X","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":550988,"name":"Kyle E. Evans","orcid":"0000-0002-6246-9520","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":551564,"name":"Daniel J. Tatar","orcid":null,"position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":311025,"name":"Shibani S. Mukerji","orcid":"0000-0002-5677-6954","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":264450,"name":"Ross Zafonte","orcid":"0000-0002-1050-796X","position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":334794,"name":"Edward W. Boyer","orcid":"0000-0002-3454-1310","position":14,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":348518,"name":"C. Ron Yu","orcid":"0000-0003-1555-8683","position":15,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":231554,"name":"Mark W. Albers","orcid":"0000-0001-7855-3455","position":16,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":550984,"name":"Steven Rodriguez","orcid":"0000-0002-2708-5791","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":55,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:13:58.531532Z","pmid":"32587994","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":[]}