The taste of the pandemic—contemporary review on the current state of research on gustation in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19)

Subjectively perceived impairment of taste is a common and distinct symptom of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19). Large meta‐analyses identified this symptom in approximately 50% of cases. However, this high prevalence is not supported by blinded and validated psychophysical gustatory testing, which showed a much lower prevalence in up to 26% of patients. This discrepancy may be due to misinterpretation of impaired retronasal olfaction as gustatory dysfunction. In addition, we hypothesized that COVID‐19–associated hyposmia is involved in the decrease of gustatory function, as found for hyposmia of different origin. This indirect mechanism would be based on the central‐nervous mutual amplification between the chemical senses, which fails in COVID‐19–associated olfactory loss. However, further research is necessary on how severe acute respiratory syndrome‐coronavirus‐2 (SARS‐CoV‐2) may directly impair the gustatory pathway as well as its subjective perception.