Losing the sense of smell predicts death within five years (theguardian.com)

Nothing scientific in the "test". Looks like a "drama seeking" article to me.

From what I understand, the paper is suggesting that it is a statistical tendency rather than a hard and fast rule.

The people in the study were older than you are now, so you're good for a while yet.

From the sampled individuals, they calculated:

P(die within 5 years | healthy sense of smell in 1st test) = 0.1

P(die within 5 years | moderate sense of smell in 1st test) = 0.19

P(die within 5 years | bad sense of smell in 1st test) = 0.39

The predictive power of the diagnosis, according to the article, depends on the loss of the smell being caused by the body's failure to regenerate the tip of the olfactory nerve through new stem cells. In your case, the cause is entirely different, and so your loss of smell doesn't have the same meaning. For example, if someone had his olfactory nerve surgically removed, it obviously would not mean he was likely to die within five years.

Thanks!

> 3,005 community-dwelling adults aged 57–85 were studied in 2005–6 (Wave 1) and their mortality determined in 2010–11 (Wave 2). Olfactory dysfunction, determined objectively at Wave 1, was used to estimate the odds of 5-year, all cause mortality via logistic regression, controlling for demographics and health factors.