According to the team at the Weizmann Institute of Science, a sniffing test also has one advantage that it does not depend on what a child says regarding the problem; therefore, it could help deal with autism at a very early age. Their method is non-verbal and just requires breathing.
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People spend longer smelling pleasant aromas such as flowers than sour smells such as rotten food. However, those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) do not make the natural differentiation and carry on smelling the same way no matter how enjoyable or very bad the scent, according to researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. Israeli researchers found that autistic kids don’t react strongly to strong smells, of either the pleasant or unpleasant variety, reports CNN.
The children were printed with good and bad odours to check their sniffing response.
Dr. Paul Wang, senior vice president and head of medical research for autism organization Autism Speaks, said via CNN that it may be “too early to say” if the sniff-test could be used to diagnose autism. However, autistic children did not alter the way they breathe in response to the various smells.
While typically developing children had adult-like sniff responses, children with autism had a significantly different sniff response and sniffed equally regardless of if the odor was pleasant or unpleasant. However, diagnosing ASDs can be a barrier to at-risk children receiving the proper treatment.
The findings suggest that a sniff test could be useful in a clinic setting, but the researchers said their test is not ready for that. They now believe that the test could provide a key indication of autism in non-verbal children. The average age of children in the study was seven.
The earlier autism is diagnosed, the sooner children can get access to behavioural or educational interventions. Now two years old, she showed a typical sniffing pattern, but “we need to see this in more than one case”, Sobel said. Wang was not involved in the study.
However the current study does give some idea of olfactory symptoms that could be occurring with autism, Wang said.
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The researchers said smells have a role in social interaction and that this may explain the link with autism. The children with autism were unable to respond as rapidly as the other children and when they had been exposed to the odors, they were watching cartoons or playing games casually. The more their response differed from normally-developing children, the more severe their autism was. The truth however remains that the ability to smell has been what has distinguished some autistic children from others – some perceive odors that are imperceptible to people and base their behavior on these peculiar smells.
