Smells Like Schizophrenia

A recent study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry suggests that one third of schizophrenia patients exhibit olfactory deficiency. Patients in the study, all of whom had undergone at least 1 year of treatment for schizophrenia, were administered the University of Pennsylvania Smell Identification Test (UPSIT). The researchers gauged remission based on 4 symptom factors: positive, negative, cognitive/disorganized, and anxiety/depressive. Patients with persistence of negative and cognitive/disorganized symptoms scored substantially lower on the UPSIT than those with remission of these traits, but UPSIT scores were not significantly correlated to remission of positive and anxiety/depressive symptoms.  http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/163/5/932