Chemosensory Clinical Services Core

Summary. Chemosensory Clinical Services Core COVID has affected millions of Americans, including causing dysfunction of taste, smell, and chemesthesis, the three main senses involved in flavor perception. Most individuals appear to recover chemosensory function fully, but with tens of millions infected by SARS-CoV-2, the small percentage who fail to recover comprises several million Americans. Long-term, possibly permanent chemosensory dysfunction has downstream consequences for cognitive (e.g., dementia) and mental (e.g., depression) health, nutrition, and quality of life. This Clinical Research Center (CRC) focuses on understanding how systemic and local inflammatory processes in olfactory and taste tissue underlie smell and taste dysfunction in long COVID and how they evolve. The Chemosensory Clinical Services Core will support and enhance the CRC's research projects by providing logistical support and coordination for all activities related to human subjects testing across all the interrelated projects and managing all testing, biosamples, and data from point of collection to storage for future use. It will establish an accessible repository for this and future projects by CRC investigators and others. In Aim C.1, the Chemosensory Clinical Services Core will assist the project staff in identifying, recruiting, and characterizing over 1,000 individuals from all over the United States with a uniquely thorough panel of tests for inclusion in Projects 1-3. We will use state-of-the-art psychophysical chemosensory testing methods, including simple, mailable, validated tests developed during the pandemic. We will collect and analyze saliva, mucus, blood, and tissue samples for inflammation markers related to oral, nasal, and systemic inflammation, as well as self-reported and measured data on participants' long COVID characteristics, quality of life, and cognitive dysfunction. Economies of scale will save finances, time, and scientific effort. Aim C.2 will create a de-identified cross-sectional and longitudinal repository comprising a database and biobank for all biosamples, data, and scripts we collect and create through this CRC. These resources, from a large cohort of Americans with long COVID, with and without persistent chemosensory dysfunction, will be fully available to the public and the broader research community for secondary data analysis. The Chemosensory Clinical Services Core will be physically housed at the Monell Chemical Senses Center, which has a long history of adhering to open science principles and NIH guidelines. The Chemosensory Clinical Services Core leaders are widely recognized for their expertise in chemosensory testing, biosample, data management, and best practices of open science, with a record of effective collaboration and leadership. This Scientific Core will thus create a resource with a significant synergistic impact in this CRC and following existing research programs on long COVID.