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Recent Smell Loss Is the Best Predictor of COVID-19 Among Individuals With Recent Respiratory Symptoms

2020· article· en· 183 citations· W3117624429 on OpenAlex· 10.1093/chemse/bjaa081

Why is this work in the frame?

A frame that forgets how it found something cannot be audited. These are the routes that admitted this work.

Canadian affiliationAn author listed a Canadian institution. This is the only route the usual frame has.

Full frame distilled prediction

Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

Candidate categories
none
Consensus categories
none
Domain
Candidate signal: noneConsensus signal: none
Study design
Candidate signal: Bench or experimentalConsensus signal: Bench or experimental
Genre
Candidate signal: EmpiricalConsensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score
0.318
Threshold uncertainty score
0.526
Validation status
machine_predicted_unvalidated · codex-gemma-dda1882f352a

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.002
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0000.000
Science and technology studies0.0000.001
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0000.000

Machine scores (provisional)

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Opus teacher head0.145
GPT teacher head0.287
Teacher spread
0.142 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation status
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Abstract

In a preregistered, cross-sectional study, we investigated whether olfactory loss is a reliable predictor of COVID-19 using a crowdsourced questionnaire in 23 languages to assess symptoms in individuals self-reporting recent respiratory illness. We quantified changes in chemosensory abilities during the course of the respiratory illness using 0-100 visual analog scales (VAS) for participants reporting a positive (C19+; n = 4148) or negative (C19-; n = 546) COVID-19 laboratory test outcome. Logistic regression models identified univariate and multivariate predictors of COVID-19 status and post-COVID-19 olfactory recovery. Both C19+ and C19- groups exhibited smell loss, but it was significantly larger in C19+ participants (mean ± SD, C19+: -82.5 ± 27.2 points; C19-: -59.8 ± 37.7). Smell loss during illness was the best predictor of COVID-19 in both univariate and multivariate models (ROC AUC = 0.72). Additional variables provide negligible model improvement. VAS ratings of smell loss were more predictive than binary chemosensory yes/no-questions or other cardinal symptoms (e.g., fever). Olfactory recovery within 40 days of respiratory symptom onset was reported for ~50% of participants and was best predicted by time since respiratory symptom onset. We find that quantified smell loss is the best predictor of COVID-19 amongst those with symptoms of respiratory illness. To aid clinicians and contact tracers in identifying individuals with a high likelihood of having COVID-19, we propose a novel 0-10 scale to screen for recent olfactory loss, the ODoR-19. We find that numeric ratings ≤2 indicate high odds of symptomatic COVID-19 (4 < OR < 10). Once independently validated, this tool could be deployed when viral lab tests are impractical or unavailable.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

The record

Venue
Chemical Senses
Topic
Olfactory and Sensory Function Studies
Field
Neuroscience
Canadian institutions
Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières
Funders
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and StrokeNational Institutes of HealthImperial College LondonRockefeller UniversityNational Institute of Nursing ResearchRussian Academy of SciencesPennsylvania State UniversityIsrael Science FoundationNational Institute on Deafness and Other Communication DisordersUniversity of Pennsylvania
Keywords
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)2019-20 coronavirus outbreakSevere acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)Respiratory systemOlfactionMedicinePsychologyAudiologyVirologyInternal medicineNeuroscienceOutbreakDisease
Has abstract in OpenAlex
yes