Abstract Olfaction, or the sense of smell, is the ability to detect airborne chemicals that transmit environmental information. Evolutionarily, this sense is essential for finding and judging the safety of food, mediating social relationships, marking territory, and assessing danger. In humans, olfaction is commonly thought to have a unique position in evoking emotional autobiographical experiences. As a critical sense, the olfactory anatomical organization has been highly conserved across mammals. While familiar to everyone, the olfactory system is generally overlooked by immunologists even though it is a mucosal surface with unique connectivity into the central nervous system (CNS). In this review we highlight the basic structures of the olfactory system, pathogens that infect this system, and highlight our expanding knowledge of local immune mechanisms.
Tracey et al. (Sun,) studied this question.