Alzheimer's disease and loss of smell in mice

'Professor Richard Doty has published the results of a small preliminary study in mice that produce increased amounts of a protein called tau which is important in the development of Alzheimer's disease.

Professor Doty suggests that there was a relationship between this protein and the decreased ability to smell. Whilst intriguing, the relevance for people with Alzheimer's disease is far from clear.

People with dementia tend to have severe loss of smell from a relatively early stage of the illness, but numerous research studies have investigated and failed to use tests of smell for early diagnosis or as a measure of disease progression. This is probably because there are many factors underlying the loss of smell in these individuals, including substantial loss of nerve cells in the olfactory (smell) centre in the brain, a phenomenon which will not have occurred to the same extent in the mice.'

Professor Clive Ballard
Director of research