老人若丧失嗅觉 表明已时日无多？(图)

屈联西

2011年01月17日  环球时报

嗅觉可判断寿命

　　As we age, it is not unusual to need reading glasses and hearing aids as our senses wane. But a surprising study has now claimed that losing your sense of smell when you are older could mean that your time is nigh。
　　Scientists from Rush University Medical Center in Chicago found that the more everyday odors a person can identify, the more likely they are to be alive several years later。
　　The team gave more than 1,000 volunteers, aged between 53 and 100, a standard 12-item smell test. The odors were fairly familiar such as smoke, lemon, black pepper, chocolate and cinnamon。
　　The researchers then followed the participants, none of whom had dementia or Parkinson's disease at the time, for four years. During this period, 321 individuals or 27.6 per cent died。
　　Amazingly, they found that the risk of death was 36 per cent higher for those who only got six of the answers correct compared to those who managed to identify 11 out of 12.
　　Study leader Dr Robert Wilson said his previous research had found that an impaired sense of smell could be an early sign of some common neurodegenerative conditions such as dementia。
　　"It is olfactory impairment's correlation with these conditions that we think accounts for its correlation with mortality," he said。
　　老之将至，人的视觉和听觉自然随之慢慢下降。如今，一项惊人的研究发现，老人若丧失嗅觉，表明此人已是时日无多。
　　芝加哥纳什大学医疗中心的科学家发现，人每天能辨别的气味种类越多，寿命就越长。
　　一千多名年龄在53到100岁之间的志愿者参与了此项试验，测试者需要辨别12种不同的常见物品的气味，如香烟、柠檬、黑椒、巧克力和桂皮。所有受试者都未罹患老年痴呆或帕金森症。
　　然后研究人员便对受试者进行长达4年的跟踪监测，期间有321名测试者去世，占总数的27.6%。
　　研究结果发现受试者中，只能辨别6种气味的人群死亡风险指数高出能辨别11种的36%。主导此次试验的罗伯特•威尔逊博士在先前的论文中称，嗅觉下降可能是老年痴呆等常见神经组织退化病症的先兆。“我们认为，嗅觉器官的损伤与神经组织退化有关，因而能间接预示人的寿命长度。”

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