The influence of antihistamines on the sense of smell in patients with intermittent allergic rhinitis
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Abstract
The sense of smell is a primal sense for humans as well as animals. Smell allows vertebrates and other organisms with olfactory receptors to identify food, predators, and provides both sensual pleasure as well as warnings danger. The aim of this study is to demonstrate that allergic rhinitis due to alder pollen allergens has an effect on the olfactory system, to assess the new olfactory tests and to investigate the influence of antihistamines on restoration of the function of the olfactory system. The study embraced 173 patients suffering from allergic rhinitis during the period of enhanced exposition to alder pollen allergens. The olfactory system examination was carried out before and after 10 days of treatment with antihistamines. The disturbance of the olfactory system functioning was found in 108 (62,4%) patients with intermittent allergic rhinitis during the period of enhanced exposition to alder pollen allergens. After 10 days of treatment with a nonsedative second generation antihistamine medicine (loratadine or desloratadine or fexofenadine) the improvement in the olfactory system functioning was detected in 58 (75,3%) examined patients. It has been shown that the olfactory marker pen test constructed by the authors is a simple screening test allowing the examination of smell sensibility and the identification of different aromatic substances. The olfactory test based on breath hold phenomenon in the moment of unpleasant odour identification can be a valuable diagnostic tool.
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Copyright: © Medical Education sp. z o.o. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0). License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license.
Address reprint requests to: Medical Education, Marcin Kuźma (marcin.kuzma@mededu.pl)
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