Alteration of taste or smell as a predictor of COVID-19
Jyh‐Ming Liou, Mei‐Jyh Chen, Tzu‐Chan Hong, Ming-Shiang Wu
Abstract
We read the studies by Jin et al 1 and Lin et al 2 regarding the GI manifestations in COVID-19 with great interest. Recently, alteration in taste (dysgeusia, hypogeusia, ageusia) or smell (dysosmia, hyposmia, anosmia) has been increasingly reported in Western patients with COVID-19.3–10 However, these symptoms were not reported from these two studies from China.1 2 Therefore, we conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to assess the prevalence of taste or smell alteration in patients with COVID-19 and to calculate the accuracy of these symptoms in the prediction of COVID-19. We searched articles in the PubMed database from 1 January 2020 through 10 May 2020 using the keywords “COVID-19” and “taste” or “smell” without any limitations in the search fields (registration number: CRD42020187912). Of the 48 articles identified using the above search strategy, 30 were excluded (9 irrelevant, 9 comments, 5 review articles, 5 case reports, 2 series of cases with taste/smell alteration) and 18 were eligible for meta-analysis (study methods and references can be found in the online supplementary materials).1–5 …