New pill helps Covid smell and taste loss fade quickly • Hacker News Board

Re: New pill helps Covid smell and taste loss fade quickly

#131

Post by 8note » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 2:29 AM UTC

Angostura wrote: post #121

dannyphantom wrote: post #23

Oooh yes yes - this is such wonderful news! Literally weeks before the world changed my boyfriends dad had begun to explore the world of cooking; he was so happy when we would bring him to niche little grocers to try things he had never known about before and trying all the food - but after his infection, and for the last 2 years - nothing. No taste. No smell. We try to make up for it by encouraging him to make stuff…

I feel for him. About 20 years ago, I had a bad bout of flu which nixed my sense of smell fro about 6 months. Eating was quite simply a chore. I didn't know whether I was drinking tea or coffee. Then one day someone made me a cup of tea and I rhapsodised about it being the best, most flavoursome cup of tea ever and I realised I had my sense of smell back. I wish him a full recovery.

Oh man,

The good part of my family dog dying was that suddenly I could smell and taste things. Switching from bland to flavour at 18 was crazy

Re: New pill helps Covid smell and taste loss fade quickly

#132

Post by giardini » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 2:54 AM UTC

pjot wrote: post #58

dannyphantom wrote: post #23

Oooh yes yes - this is such wonderful news! Literally weeks before the world changed my boyfriends dad had begun to explore the world of cooking; he was so happy when we would bring him to niche little grocers to try things he had never known about before and trying all the food - but after his infection, and for the last 2 years - nothing. No taste. No smell. We try to make up for it by encouraging him to make stuff…

Around 15 years ago I broke my nose which eventually led to a loss of taste and smell. Around 8 months ago I had surgery on the internal structures of my nose which in addition to allowing me to breath again, I can also taste and smell. The experience has been completely mind blowing. On the flip side I can no longer order the spiciest of spicy Thai and Indian food from my usual restaurants. The owners poke fun at me…

I had a similar injury with on-and-off sense of smell since.

What type of surgery did you have done? I'd like to bring it up with my ENT doctor (who treats my nose as his personal polyp farm), and has prescribed only steroids (which DO work but have bad side-effects).

Re: New pill helps Covid smell and taste loss fade quickly

#133

Post by pnpnp » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 3:03 AM UTC

nerevarthelame wrote: post #86

pnpnp wrote: post #75

Do we know what the mechanism of action is?

"[Loss of smell] is sometimes the only symptom to be reported, implying that it has a neurological basis separate from nasal congestion. As of January 2021, it is believed that these symptoms are caused by infection of sustentacular cells that support and provide nutrients to sensory neurons in the nose, rather than infection of the neurons themselves. Sustentacular cells have many Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (AC…

I should have clarified - I meant the mechanism of action for the new treatment.

Re: New pill helps Covid smell and taste loss fade quickly

#134

Post by pjot » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 3:28 AM UTC

giardini wrote: post #132

pjot wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Around 15 years ago I broke my nose which eventually led to a loss of taste and smell. Around 8 months ago I had surgery on the internal structures of my nose which in addition to allowing me to breath again, I can also taste and smell. The experience has been completely mind blowing. On the flip side I can no longer order the spiciest of spicy Thai and Indian food from my usual restaurants. The owners poke fun at me…

I had a similar injury with on-and-off sense of smell since. What type of surgery did you have done? I'd like to bring it up with my ENT doctor (who treats my nose as his personal polyp farm), and has prescribed only steroids (which DO work but have bad side-effects).

I had a septoplasty and turbinate reduction. The recovery was pretty brutal - there’s many nerves and pain receptors in the middle of your skull apparently. In all it’s amazing to not have a “stuffed” nose all the time.

Re: New pill helps Covid smell and taste loss fade quickly

#135

Post by Smoosh » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 3:44 AM UTC

superb_dev wrote: post #52

soco wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And those many who didn't lose either smell or taste were breathing through...?

Not to get technical, but you can breathe through your butt (kinda…) https://www.cnet.com/science/scientists-say-mammals-can-brea...

Interesting. I've had several managers who could talk in a similar way.

Re: New pill helps Covid smell and taste loss fade quickly

#136

Post by Benlights » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 4:23 AM UTC

I've had Covid at least three times myself. The first time was in Feb 2020 and was my roughest bout. I didn't fully lose my sense of smell or taste but it was very confused. Oranges tastes like parsley and other foods got swapped. I've always prided myself on my sense of smell and have been able to differentiate ingredients in a dish. After about a month my sense of taste and smell seemed to go back to normal but for about 2 years I felt that they had not recovered fully. I love to cook and my taste clearly changed. I started drinking more full bodied wines and eating blue cheese, things that had not been my favorite.

I've had at least one but I suspect 2 brushes with Covid in the intervening years. They were pretty mild with no fever and only cold like symptoms.

Around March of this year (2023) I experienced a bout of Covid that reminded me of the original time I had contracted it. Fever, body aches, lightheadedness etc. The symptoms were the same just lighter in intensity and over quicker. The interesting thing is that I never lost my sense of smell and I feel like I've regained what I'd lost from my first bout of Covid.

No more blue cheese:(

Re: New pill helps Covid smell and taste loss fade quickly

#137

Post by Eisenstein » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 4:46 AM UTC

beej71 wrote: post #113

(Can I just say how much I love drug names? I really want to know the process for generating them.)

Same way tech products get named -- the Marketing department does it and it is kind of a cultural thing in industries to have a naming technique that follows other brands in style. In tech this would be similar prefixes and removing vowels and using completely unrelated but common words for branding. In pharma they tend to use words that have pseudo-latin fixes ('Nexium'), alchemical sounding names ('Elixophyllin'), or fake-science/medical sounding terms ('Crestor'), and my favorite, words that sounds like they are life-giving or philosophically pleasant states of mind or physicality ('Abilify')

Re: New pill helps Covid smell and taste loss fade quickly

#138

Post by lamontcg » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 4:51 AM UTC

autoexec wrote: post #130

lamontcg wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is more likely prior immunity. Everyone now has enough antibodies and T-cells so that even if we get infected it isn't anywhere near as likely to escape outside of the respiratory tract, and the anosmia-affected neurons are mostly protected, even though you can still get sick.

> even if we get infected it isn't anywhere near as likely to escape outside of the respiratory tract That hasn't stopped the virus from spreading with increasing effectiveness and each time it moves to a new host it has a chance to mutate into something we aren't able to defend against, or something that brings new harms. The loss of warning signs letting us know when we're infected is a bad sign.

> That hasn't stopped the virus from spreading with increasing effectiveness

It really doesn't. They've finally stopped talking about the idiocy of every single new variant being 2x to 4x times as transmissible as the last variant because the math would be fucking stupid with an R(t) of something like >1024 by now.

They've been conflating immune evasion with intrinsic transmissibility for the past several years. That has finally started to disappear.

> each time it moves to a new host it has a chance to mutate into something we aren't able to defend against,

Except that we're not observing any pattern of mutations around T-cell epitopes in the virus suggestive of any risk of immune escape from T-cell recognition -- which it the important defense against severe disease and death and those defenses that we have are what has turned the virus milder.

The whole reason why we likely have a two tiered immune system[*] with fast neutralizing antibodies and slow T-cells is likely because the end product of 500 million years or so of evolution favored immune systems that were clever enough to force these kinds of viruses to evolve to escape only the first line of defense.

> The loss of warning signs letting us know when we're infected is a bad sign.

No, that's a sign our immune systems work and its not their first goat rodeo with a pandemic virus.

Really, how counterintuitively up your own ass do you have to be to take the very clear signs that the symptoms are abating and turn that into something to fear.

[*] well multi-tiered, but those are the two biggies of the adaptive immune system.

Re: New pill helps Covid smell and taste loss fade quickly

#139

Post by orra » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 7:53 AM UTC

Arete314159 wrote: post #115

orra wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some blood antibody tests can distinguish between viral induced antibodies versus infection induced antibodies. However, antibodies decrease with time. (We have memory T-cells etc for long term immunity). Whilst I am not an expert, I would be very surprised if virtual induced antibodies were still detectable. What you describe: it is very possible you had COVID, but it is also very possible you had a bad flu. There a…

Do you have any more info on this? I have not heard of such a test.

Here is an example test which checks specifically for virus induced antibodies: https://monitormyhealth.org.uk/covid19-antibody-test/>. Non-profit Testing for All also used to sell similar tests, but they have stopped operating.

In contrast this test does not distinguish between virus and vaccine as the cause: https://onlinedoctor.superdrug.com/coronavirus-antibody-test...>.

I don't have a better approach than checking the descriptions of individual antibody tests. But I know the distinction is real, because IIRC the ONS (statistics body) used tests which distinguished, when they ran their ongoing study.

Re: New pill helps Covid smell and taste loss fade quickly

#140

Post by raylad » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 9:22 AM UTC

treprinum wrote: post #123

hinkley wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the rarer side effects of using Zicam nasal spray is loss of sense of smell. Somebody experiencing this reported that they accidentally restored their sense of smell by being exposed to pepper spray. There are nasal decongestants out there that are essentially dilute capsaicin in suspension in saline (as a sufferer of sinus infections I have tried most things at this point). It's not pleasant, but it's less un…

Try a nasal spray with lactoferrin - that one breaks down bacterial biofilm, getting to places where other sprays can't.

Lactoferrin is also able to kill SARS-CoV-2.

In 2020 I had lactoferrin on fabric tested by a university laboratory for a potential product. The product didn't go anywhere after that, but it was conclusively shown that lactoferrin did inactivate the virus by about 92% instantly and 98% in a minute.

If you want to use it as a mouthwash, the product Salivea (a quite pleasant product with a horrible name) has lactoferrin as one of the ingredients.