Distorted olfactory perception: a systematic review

The sense of smell provides people with valuable input from the chemical environment around them. The human sense of smell generally fails in three ways; one is an intensity reduction and the other two are the quality of changes. Smell disorders can be classified into central or peripheral depending on their origin. Central causes can be related to an area of hyper-functioning brain cells generating this odor perception, thus olfactory distortions have also been observed with epilepsy and migraine. In this paper, we present a review of the current clinical understanding of olfactory distortions and discuss how they can be evaluated and therapies to treat this debilitating condition.