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Alteration of taste or smell as a predictor of COVID-19
  1. Jyh-Ming Liou1,2,3,
  2. Mei-Jyh Chen1,2,
  3. Tzu-Chan Hong1,2,
  4. Ming-Shiang Wu1,2
  1. 1 Internal Medicine, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan
  2. 2 Internal Medicine, National Taiwan University College of Medicine, Taipei, Taiwan
  3. 3 Department of Medicine, National Taiwan University Cancer Center, Taipei, Taiwan
  1. Correspondence to Dr Jyh-Ming Liou, Internal Medicine, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei City 100, Taiwan; jyhmingliou{at}gmail.com; Professor Ming-Shiang Wu; mingshiang{at}ntu.edu.tw

http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/gutjnl-2020-322125

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    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 …

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors J-ML designed the study and wrote the protocol. J-ML prepared the statistical analyses and drafted the article, which was critically revised and approved by all authors. All authors had full access to the data and participated in the decision to submit for publication.

    • Funding Supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan (grant number: TCTC 108-2321-B-002-040), the Ministry of Health and Welfare, Taiwan (MOHW108-CDC-C-114-112102), and the 'Center of Precision Medicine' of the Higher Education Sprout Project by the Ministry of Education (MOE), Taiwan (grant number: NTU-107L9014-1). The funding source had no role in study design, data collection, analysis, report writing or the decision to submit this paper for publication.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient and public involvement Patients and/or the public were not involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of this research.

    • Patient consent for publication Not required.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.