You could possibly be able to use your sweet tooth to detect probable coronavirus cases.
Ohio State University scientists are working on using hard candy to screen for probable COVID-19, via a grant from the National Institutes of Health. The $305,000 grant funds research aimed at finding easy ways to detect the virus, according to Ohio State News.
With the grant, Ohio State researchers are hoping that hard candies will offer insight into one of the more common symptoms: loss of taste and smell. About 86 percent of patients who test positive lose those senses, so researchers want to give people eight hard candies that are the same color but with different flavors.
Project co-leader and associate professor of food science and technology Christopher Simons said loss of smell “makes it a much better predictor (of a positive case), especially if it’s a sudden loss,” since the symptom is so widespread.
Plus, “who doesn’t like candy? It’s an ideal stimulus because for this to work, people have to want to do it,” he said.
“With our assessment, you unwrap the candy and smell it to assess orthonasal olfaction, and pop it into your mouth to rate how strong the flavor is, assessing the retronasal component," Simons explained. "You also assess sweetness and sourness, which is the taste component. It allows us to tackle three different aspects of flavor perception."
Researchers will monitor whether or not the subject will be able to identify the correct flavor. They’ll test 2,800 people by giving them hard candies daily for 90 days, requiring them to report what they taste. Researchers are aiming to primarily recruit Ohio State students, according to OSU.
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