People lost their sense of smell after using zinc nasal gel
By 2009 the FDA had more than 130 reports of lost smell linked to homeopathic intranasal zinc. All of it concerns the nasal gel, not lozenges or tablets.
What the study found
Zinc gel sprayed up the nose took people's sense of smell
By 2009 the FDA had more than 130 reports of lost smell linked to homeopathic intranasal zinc, and judged that using it as labelled delivered enough zinc to be a serious safety concern. A separate analysis ran the standard nine-point test for causation and found every point met.
The caveat · Reports, not confirmed cases
Adverse-event reports are voluntary and unverified, so 130 counts reports received rather than confirmed cases, and it cannot be turned into a risk per user in either direction. The causality analysis is a structured argument rather than a controlled study, and it comes from the same clinic and senior author as the case series it draws on. All of it concerns the nasal gel: lozenges and tablets are a different product taken a different way, with no comparable evidence of smell loss.
What we don't know
Adverse-event reports are voluntary and unverified, so 130 counts reports received rather than confirmed cases, and it cannot be turned into a risk per user in either direction. The causality analysis is a structured argument rather than a controlled study, and it comes from the same clinic and senior author as the case series it draws on. All of it concerns the nasal gel: lozenges and tablets are a different product taken a different way, with no comparable evidence of smell loss.