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Sense of Smell

Yehuda Shoenfeld, MD  |  Issue: April 2009  |  

In summary, it seems that as clinicians, we might do well to return to basics by either asking our patients about their sense of smell or by performing a simple physical diagnostic test to evaluate the function of this sense. Defects in smell function may indicate a specific CNS involvement in SLE and other autoimmune rheumatic diseases, as well as other common neurological diseases. Moreover, developing specific fragrances already known to the ancient Egyptians and Greeks may add another tool to treat hitherto unexplained psychiatric conditions.

Last—but not least—our induction of pure psychiatric states using autoantibodies may relate to the possibility that some of the cases of idiopathic psychiatric states have an autoimmune origin.8

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Dr. Shoenfeld is professor in the department of medicine ‘B’ and Centre for Autoimmune Diseases at Sheba Medical Centre in Tel-Hashome and incumbent of the Laura Schwarz-Kipp Chair for Research of Autoimmune Diseases in the Sackler Faculty of Medicine at Tel-Aviv University, both in Israel.

References

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