Lost your sense of smell? It may be sign of early death.

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•  Older adults with a reduced ability to identify certain odours had an increased risk of dying.

As per a new study, people who have problems with their sense of smell may be at an increased risk for dying sooner than those who don't.
The study found that older adults with a reduced ability to identify certain odours had an increased risk of dying during an average follow-up of 4 years. The mortality rate was 45 percent in participants with the lowest scores on a 40-item smell test, compared with 18 percent of participants with the highest scores.
The study included 1169 Medicare beneficiaries who scratched and sniffed individual's odorant strips and chose the best answer from 4 items listed as multiple-choice.
Lead author Davangere Devanand of the Annals of Neurology said that the increased risk of death increased progressively with worse performance in the smell identification test and was highest in those with the worst smelling ability, even after adjusting for medical burden and dementia.
Devanand added that this was a study of older adults, the question that remains is whether young to middle-aged adults with impaired smell identification ability are at high risk as they grow older.