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A bad sense of smell in retirement may be a warning sign of an untimely death, the researchers warned.
A study of more than 2,000 people between the ages of 70 and 80 found that people with difficulty in recognizing common odors were 50% more likely to die in the next 10 years than people with sensitive noses.
Even healthy people at the start of the study had a higher risk of death if their sense of smell was impaired – suggesting that the problem could indicate a deterioration in health years before the onset of problems more serious.
Scientists believe that odor tests may one day become a routine in medical practices.
Compared with those with a good odor, those in the "poor" category were 46% more likely to die after 10 years and 30% after 13 years.
Some experts even think that the deterioration of the sense of smell could be an alarming sign of the aging process – it tells us more about the state of health of a person than about his age.
Dr. Honglei Chen, a researcher at Michigan State University, said, "Smell is becoming less prevalent as people get older and there is a link to a higher risk of death.
"Our study is the first to examine the potential reasons why it predicts higher mortality."
The team analyzed the sense of smell in 2,300 people aged 71 to 82 years.
Each person received 12 common smells to breathe, and for each scent, four options to identify it were presented.
Participants were then classified as having a good, moderate or low sense of smell based on their accuracy – and then followed for the next 13 years.
Compared with those with a good odor, those in the "poor" category were 46% more likely to die after 10 years and 30% after 13 years.
The researchers, writing in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, said the bad sense of smell was already an early sign of Parkinson's disease and dementia and was also linked to weight loss.
But they said it only accounted for 28% of the increased risk of death.
Dr. Chen said, "We have no reason for more than 70% of the increased risk. We need to know what happened to these people.
"This tells us that, in the elderly, the alteration of the sense of smell has broader health consequences than those we have experienced before.
"The inclusion of scent screening in regular visits to the doctor might be a good idea at some point." Dr. Chen said that people who feared for their sense of smell should talk to their doctor.
"It's always safe to talk to your doctor about your health concerns," he said.
Professor Robert Howard, senior psychiatry expert at University College London, said, "The study showed that the risk of death over the next ten years increased by about one-half in people suffering from a disorder of smell and risk could be explained by the development of Parkinson's or Alzheimer's disease or by weight loss.
"Most of the risk of increased mortality could not be explained by associations with specific diseases such as cancer or cardiovascular disorders.
"This raises the interesting possibility that the loss of smell is a marker of widespread aging and that older people and their doctors take it seriously." Professor Kevin McConway, expert in applied statistics at the Open University, said true advance.
But he added, "The problem with any observational research like this is that it's impossible to be sure of what's causing what.
"There are a lot of differences between people who feel good and those who can not, aside from their sense of smell, and differences in mortality rates could be due to these other differences and not to their sense of smell.
"One of the possibilities is that the bad sense of smell is a sign, perhaps an early sign, of an underlying disease – and that this disease is leading to increased mortality.
"Another sense is that the bad sense of smell can itself lead to disease, perhaps because the bad smell affects the taste of food and can therefore contribute to poor nutrition that could harm the health.
"Most likely, these two possibilities, as well as others, could be at stake.
"So much remains to be discovered in future research."
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