News Neuroscience

COVID-19 gave new urgency to the science of restoring smell

The sense may often be an afterthought, but its loss affects people deeply

A man has lowered his face mask to smell a sliced lemon.

COVID-19 and other viral illnesses can steal a person’s ability to smell.  New methods aim to restore the sense.

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By Laura Sanders

It was the juice that tipped him off. At lunch, Ícaro de A.T. Pires found the flavor of his grape juice muted, flattened into just water with sugar. There was no grape goodness. “I stopped eating lunch and went to the bathroom to try to smell the toothpaste and shampoo,” says Pires, an ear, nose and throat specialist at Hospital IPO in Curitiba, Brazil.