This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Reply to article  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Steven Nordin, PhD; Ove Almkvist, PhD; Birgitta Berglund, PhD; Lars-Olof Wahlund, MD

Arch Neurol. 1997;54(8):993-998.

Abstract
Objective
To investigate whether odor detection sensitivity for pyridine, suggested by previous research not to be affected, is impaired in Alzheimer disease (AD) and whether an association exists between odor threshold and both degree of dementia and rate of dementia progression in AD.

Method
The method of constant stimuli was used to determine odor thresholds for pyridine in 18 patients with AD (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Third Edition, Revised and National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Disorders and Stroke—Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders Association criteria) and 16 healthy elderly control subjects. All participants were carefully examined with medical and neuropsychological tests.

Results
Six patients with AD but none of the controls were anosmic (total olfactory loss) to pyridine, and the 12 nonanosmic patients had significantly higher detection thresholds (50% probability for detection, 323 parts per billion [ppb]) than did the controls (50% probability for detection, 105 ppb). In addition, an association was found between odor threshold and both degree of dementia and rate of dementia progression in AD.

Conclusions
In contrast to previous findings, our results provide evidence that odor sensitivity in AD is impaired for pyridine. Odor sensitivity, in addition to other suggested predictors of progression rate, may be of interest for defining subgroups of AD or for clinical prognostic judgments of single patients.

Author Affiliations
From the Department of Psychology, Stockholm University, Stockholm (Drs Nordin and Berglund), the Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institute, Solna (Drs Nordin and Berglund), and the Division of Geriatric Medicine, Department of Clinical Neuroscience and Family Medicine, Huddinge University Hospital, Karolinska Institute, Huddinge, (Drs Nordin, Almkvist, and Wahlund, Sweden.

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?

THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES

Anosmia is very common in the Lewy body variant of Alzheimer's disease
Olichney et al.
J. Neurol. Neurosurg. Psychiatry 2005;76:1342-1347.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Olfactory Function in Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer's Disease: An Investigation Using Psychophysical and Electrophysiological Techniques
Peters et al.
Am. J. Psychiatry 2003;160:1995-2002.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Anosmia in dementia is associated with Lewy bodies rather than Alzheimer's pathology
McShane et al.
J. Neurol. Neurosurg. Psychiatry 2001;70:739-743.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Olfactory Deficits in Patients With Mild Cognitive Impairment Predict Alzheimer's Disease at Follow-Up
Devanand et al.
Am. J. Psychiatry 2000;157:1399-1405.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Impaired olfaction as a marker for cognitive decline: Interaction with apolipoprotein E {epsilon}4 status
Graves et al.
Neurology 1999;53:1480-1480.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT