In order to help patients who have lost their sense of smell as a result of Covid-19, researchers from the Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Marseille (AP-HM) have teamed up with a spice company to create a training kit olfactory.
The loss of smell, total or partial, is indeed one of the symptoms of Covid-19. This phenomenon, called anosmia, is usually accompanied by a loss of taste, called ageusia.
If this symptom generally disappears after a few days, it is possible that some people suffer from it for several months.
In order to help these people, the AP-HM has teamed up with an SME based in the Bouches-du-Rhône, to create a kit made up of four main spices: thyme, curry, fennel and clove cloud. The set comes with exercise sheets and progress tracking.
An olfactory kit at the price of 30 euros
“It is preferable to choose evocative smells in terms of memory and emotion in order to recreate the path of Proust’s madeleine”, explained Emmanuelle Albert, speech therapist in the ENT department of the La Convention hospital in Marseille, to our colleagues from France 3 Provence-Alpes Côte d’Azur.
The researchers took four months to design this olfactory kit. With the partner company, a family SME that has existed for 150 years, 200 spices from all over the world had been processed, before selecting four.
It is now possible to obtain this kit on the Internet for the sum of 30 euros. The profits will then be donated to hospitals in Marseille for medical research.