Nasal injections could treat long-term COVID-19-related smell loss

In a trial led by Stanford Medicine researchers, more than half of patients with persistent smell loss saw improvement with injections of platelet-rich plasma. Early in the pandemic, when people with COVID-19 began reporting that they lost their sense of smell, Zara Patel, MD, figured as much. A professor of otolaryngology at Stanford Medicine, Patel has, for years, studied loss of smell as a symptom of viral infections. “Many viruses can cause smell loss, so it wasn’t surprising to us as rhinologists when we found out that COVID-19 causes loss of smell and taste. It was almost expected,” she said. Patel also knew that the condition could last a while and that few effective treatments were available. According to a 2022 survey by Patel and colleagues, about 15% of people who experienced smell loss from COVID-19 continued to have problems six months later. That’s roughly 9 million people in the U.S., and the...