Image: neuroscope.substack.com
The Story
A vanished smell of dead roses can come from a recovering smell system, even when the house is clear.
A brief smell of dead roses after COVID fits a known smell-disorder pathway more closely than an external odor: damaged or recovering smell circuits can generate false or distorted signals. The ordinary clinical reading is not that the experience is imaginary, but that its source is biological. Because phantosmia can also accompany other conditions, persistent or recurrent episodes warrant medical assessment.
- MechanismCOVID-related injury and inflammation in the olfactory system can disrupt how odor signals are detected and interpreted.
- Clinical cautionPhantosmia has other possible causes, including upper-respiratory infection, sinus inflammation, seizures, medicines and neurological disease.
- COVID-19 is recognized as a cause of phantosmia, which may come and go and can involve foul or pleasant odors.
- A 2022 questionnaire study found phantosmia among people with COVID-related smell dysfunction and linked it especially with fluctuating, prolonged or partial smell loss.
- A case report described nine patients developing phantom smells after COVID, often around a month after diagnosis.
Deeper Insight
The dead-rose scent broke through a sense COVID had erased. Stories like this cluster around grief, and they keep arriving.
Two rooms. One day. A smell like the poster’s late mother’s old bouquets appeared after long-term COVID-related smell loss, then vanished. Phantosmia, a smell sensed without a source, fits the known pattern. But the personal link keeps the stranger possibility alive. Another person smelling it at the same time would change the story.
- What it could changeA repeated shared scent could turn a private experience into something others can witness too.
- How it touches todayPeople are asking where memory ends and altered senses begin when familiar smells return wrong or unbidden.
- Our futureWe may record more strange sensory events before we know whether they belong to the body, the place, or both.
- The poster connects the odor to both post-COVID smell loss and the remembered scent of bouquets kept by their late mother.
- Phantosmia can occur without an environmental odor, while parosmia can make real odors smell rotten or otherwise wrong.
- Research describes persistent post-viral smell disruption as involving factors such as depleted sensory neurons, inflammation and altered receptor expression, though the mechanism remains incomplete.
Sources · 7
- 3 Journals & institutions
- 1 News reporting
- 2 Forum, video, personal
- 1 Other / unclassified
What do these mean?
- Journals & institutions. Published in a peer-reviewed journal, or from a university, government body, court or other institution.
- News reporting. Journalism: newspapers, magazines and news sites.
- Forum, video, personal. Forums, social posts, video, blogs and personal accounts.
- Other / unclassified. A site we have not classified yet. This says nothing good or bad about it.
Featured · Primary source · pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Post-viral olfactory loss and parosmia
Journal · peer-reviewed
# Post-viral olfactory loss and parosmia PMC10568123. BMJ Medicine, 2(1):e000382. Published 2023-07-20. ## Authors Zhen Yu Liu, Luigi Angelo Vaira, Paolo Boscolo-Rizzo, Abigail Walker, Claire Hopkins ## Details - DOI: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjmed-2022-000382 - PMID: 37841969 (https://pubmed.ncbi.n
Read sourceAnalysis · reddit.com
Sudden Smell of Dead Flowers - Why?
Forum or personal account
Yesterday, I suddenly started smelling a strong smell of decaying flowers (I'm pretty sure it was decaying roses). I thought it might be something my husband was working on in his basement workshop, but there was nothing. I only smelled it when I was alone, and it happened in two completely separate parts of my house. Today, it's totally gone. The funny thing is, I almost completely lost my sense
Read sourceAnalysis · mayoclinic.org
Phantosmia: What causes olfactory hallucinations? - Mayo Clinic
Other
Phantosmia: What causes olfactory hallucinations? - Mayo Clinic # Phantosmia: What causes olfactory hallucinations? By Mayo Clinic Staff June 05, 2024 ## What causes olfactory hallucinations? An olfactory hallucination, known as phantosmia, makes you detect smells that aren't in your environment. Th
Read source