Changes in the olfactory system in patients with schizophrenia

The olfactory sensory system is a potential site for studying the processes in the central nervous system in case of mental illness, since it is the only part of the central nervous system where the development of neurons continues steadily throughout life. In this paper, we studied the peculiarities of disfunction of olfactory thresholds and the ability to discriminate odors in patients with schizophrenia compared with normal indicators (mentally healthy persons), as well as the relationship of these disorders with psychopathological symptoms and cognitive deficiency in patients with paranoid form of schizophrenia. In the group of patients with schizophrenia when determining olfactory sensitivity, there were no significant differences with the control group by the Mann-Whitney U-test. However, the scatter of the results obtained in the patient group was much wider than in the healthy group. The ability to discriminate odors in the group of patients with schizophrenia was significantly lower than in the group of healthy ones (U=100.5, p function show_eabstract() { $('#eabstract1').hide(); $('#eabstract2').show(); $('#eabstract_expand').hide(); }