{"doi":"10.4193/rhin21.351","title":"COVID-19 related chemosensory changes in individuals with self-reported obesity","abstract":"BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: Self-reported smell loss is a prominent symptom of COVID-19 infection and a potentially useful clinical tool for remote pre-screening of this disease. However, pre-existing chemosensory dysfunction with obesity may diminish the usefulness of self-reported smell loss in this vulnerable group. Here we aim to compare COVID-19 related chemosensory alterations in participants with and without obesity and determine if self-reported smell loss is predictive of lab-based COVID-19 diagnosis in both groups in the context of restrictive clinical data collection. SUBJECTS/METHODS: In this secondary analysis of a cross-sectional global dataset, we compared self-reported chemosensory ability in participants with a respiratory illness reporting a positive (C19+; n = 5156) or a negative (C19-; n = 659) COVID-19 laboratory test outcome, who also self-reported to have obesity (C19+; n = 433, C19-; n = 86) or not. RESULTS: Participants with obesity and without obesity reported a similar decline in smell, taste, and chemesthesis during illness. In C19+ participants with obesity, we observed a greater relative prevalence of non-chemosensory symptoms, including respiratory and GI symptoms. Critically, we found that the model previously proposed also predicts C19+ diagnosis in participants with obesity. CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that COVID-19 respondents with obesity experience a similar self-reported chemosensory loss as those without obesity. In both groups self-reported chemosensory symptoms are similarly predictive of COVID-19 infection, thus highlighting the potential of collecting self-report of symptoms and comorbidities remotely when clinical observations are restrictive.","journal":"Rhinology Journal","year":2022,"id":308386,"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":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9643,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1003293,"name":"G. Coppin","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1003294,"name":"M.G. Veldhuizen","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":93283,"name":"V. Parma","orcid":"0000-0003-1261-5435","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1003295,"name":"P.V. Joseph","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1003292,"name":"S. Bhutani","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":33,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T00:33:03.486542Z","pmid":"35191431","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":[]}