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PubMed2004

Evaluation of gustatory function after third molar removal.

The aim of this study was to determine the severity of taste changes after surgical removal of all four third molars in one session. Taste function in 27 patients was measured before and at 1 month and 6 months after surgery. In every patient all four third molars were removed using local anesthesia and sedation with midazolam and fentanyl. For testing gustatory function, two tests were administered: a whole-mouth, above threshold test and a spatial (localized) taste test. For this purpose, sucrose, NaCl, citric acid and quinine hydrochloride solutions were used. Taste intensity of quinine hydrochloride of the palate was significantly reduced 1 month after surgery (P < 0.05) but recovered and reach to preoperative values 6 months after surgery. The results showed that there were no significant changes in gustatory function after third molar surgery.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1978

The psychophysics of taste.

Modern psychophysical studies of sensory systems have produced new insight into sensory function and new techniques that have application to the clinical evaluation of taste. Most previous taste evaluation has been done with threshold measures that are subject to a variety of problems and that also fail to provide an accurate picture of suprathreshold sensitivity. The scaling of suprathreshold intensity reflects a patient's taste world more accurately than thresholds.

Citrates↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Gustatory and olfactory dysfunction in dementia: not specific to Alzheimer's disease.

Significant losses in the ability to detect the taste of glutamic acid and to recognize odorants were found in demented patients when compared with age-matched controls. These losses were not specific to patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) but were also found in demented patients without AD. Detection thresholds for bitter-tasting quinine HCl were not higher in demented patients than in age-matched controls but were higher than thresholds in young subjects. These data suggest that losses in taste in demented patients may vary with the chemical structure of the tastant. The degree of loss in the ability to recognize odorants was greater in patients with a family history of senile dementia.

Aged↗
PubMed1984

Effect of renal transplantation on zinc metabolism and taste acuity in uremia. A prospective study.

The effect of successful renal transplantation on zinc metabolism and taste acuity was determined prospectively in 15 adult uremic patients. Before transplantation all patients had subnormal concentrations of zinc in plasma and hair, as well as abnormal taste detection and recognition thresholds for sodium (salty), sucrose (sweet), hydrochloric acid (sour), and urea (bitter). Following renal transplantation, abnormalities of taste acuity and zinc metabolism persisted and were accompanied by increased urinary zinc excretion in all patients. Normalization of zinc concentration in plasma and hair as well as taste acuity did not occur until one year after transplantation and was associated with a concomitant decrease in urinary zinc excretion. The plasma zinc levels and daily urinary zinc excretion were inversely related (r = 0.62, P less than .001) in all patients with normal allograft function. None of the zinc parameters was significantly related to azathioprine or corticosteroid dosage. The results of this study suggest that zinc deficiency and taste abnormalities of uremia persist up to one year posttransplant and may be related to increased urinary zinc losses. The mechanisms underlying post-transplant hyperzincuria as well as clinical significance of zinc deficiency following transplantation remain to be determined.

Adult↗
PubMed1978

Chemical stimulation of single human fungiform taste papillae: sensitivity profiles and locus of stimulation.

Psychophysical responses to chemical stimulation of single human fungiform taste papillae were obtained from 40 papillae in four subjects. Effects of solution concentration and locus of stimulation were examined for nine test compounds. Sensitivity profiles constructed for individual papillae showed that single fungiform papillae mediate more than a single taste quality. In addition, the chemical sensitivities of individual papillae were reflected in their thresholds for all compounds, and correlation coefficients between recognition thresholds were no greater for similar than for dissimilar tasting compounds. No differences in mediation of quality were found as a function of locus of stimulation on the papilla, although sensitivity was found to be greater on the dorsal surface than on the sides. The data were discussed within the context of previous studies of response characteristics of single papilla.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1999

Depressed taste and smell in geriatric patients.

BACKGROUND: Geriatric patients have a number of dental care problems that younger patients do not encounter. The oral changes associated with aging can have a significant effect on the efficacy of dental treatment. TYPES OF STUDIES REVIEWED: The authors reviewed studies dealing with the causes of depressed sense of taste and smell; the causes included aging, disease, medications and dental problems. Based on their findings, the authors described the location and anatomy of taste buds and receptor cells for smell and explored appetite, saliva, food seasonings, nutrition and dietary recommendations. They also discussed the relationship of smoking and tongue cleaning to taste sensations. RESULTS: The authors found that considerable differences exist between elderly people and young people in regards to sensory perception and pleasantness of food flavors. Salt and bitter taste acuity declines with age, but sweet and sour perceptivity does not. Olfactory acuity also declines with age. The authors found that most of the studies reviewed suggested that the sense of smell is more impaired by aging compared with the sense of taste. Smoking diminishes the taste of food and makes flavorful foods taste flat, while tongue brushing can increase taste sensation for geriatric patients. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS: Food can become tasteless and unappetizing for geriatric patients as the result of declining taste and smell perception. Geriatric patients should be encouraged to add seasonings to their food instead of relying on excessive consumption of salt and sugar to give their food flavor. Adequate nutrition, tongue cleaning and smoking cessation are recommended for geriatric dental patients.

Aged↗
PubMed2002

New perspectives on taste and primate evolution: the dichotomy in gustatory coding for perception of beneficent versus noxious substances as supported by correlations among human thresholds.

In various environments where primates are presently observed, as well as in forests and savannas which have been inhabited by australopithecines and early hominids, there are (or there have been presumably) categories of substances eliciting taste signals associated with stereotyped responses. Such is the case for various soluble sugars of fruits and nectars, attracting consumers, and for several plant compounds in which bitter or strongly astringent properties have a repulsive effect. The occurrence of such classes of tasty substances among natural products appears to be related to the evolutionary trends that shaped primate sensory perception (for detecting either beneficent or potentially noxious substances) in the context of a long history of coevolution between animals and plants. Here, we present original psychophysical data on humans (412 individuals aged 17-59 years) as an analogy with which to test recent evidence from electrophysiology in nonhuman primates (Hellekant et al. [1997] J. Neurophysiol. 77:978-993; Danilova et al. [1998] Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 855:160-164) that taste fibers can be grouped into clusters of "best-responding fibers" with two more specific clusters, one for sugars and one for quinine and tannins. The collinearity found between human taste responses (recognition thresholds) for fructose and sucrose, as well as for quinine and tannins, is presented and discussed as another evidence of the two-direction evolutionary trend determining taste sensitivity. Salt perception appears to be totally independent of these trends. Accordingly, the appreciation of a salty taste seems to be a recent culturally learned response, and not a primary taste perception. The very existence of primary tastes is discussed in the context of evolutionary trends, past and present.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1999

Fluctuating olfactory sensitivity and distorted odor perception in allergic rhinitis.

OBJECTIVE: To characterize the relationship between allergic rhinitis, the severity and duration of nasal disease, olfactory function, and self-reported olfactory symptoms, including fluctuations or distortions in odor perception. DESIGN: Assessment of olfactory function and symptoms of 90 patients with allergic rhinitis. SETTING: A clinic of a university teaching hospital and research facility. PATIENTS: Sixty patients who presented to the Taste and Smell Clinic who had positive allergy test results and 30 patients who presented to the Allergy-Immunology Clinic. The Taste and Smell Clinic patients were grouped by nasal-sinus disease status (30 without chronic rhinosinusitis or nasal polyps, 14 with chronic rhinosinusitis but without polyps, and 16 with nasal polyps). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Subjective olfactory symptom questionnaire and objective olfactory function tests. RESULTS: The Allergy-Immunology Clinic patients were diagnosed as being normosmic and the Taste and Smell Clinic patients as being hyposmic or anosmic with olfactory loss that increased significantly with nasal-sinus disease severity. Comparisons with normative data confirm that olfactory scores observed in all groups were significantly lower than expected because of the aging process alone. The self-reported duration of olfactory loss increased significantly with nasal-sinus disease severity. The Taste and Smell Clinic patients without chronic rhinosinusitis or nasal polyps reported the greatest incidence of olfactory distortions and olfactory loss associated with upper respiratory tract infections. CONCLUSIONS: There appears to be a continuum of duration and severity of olfactory loss in allergic rhinitis that parallels increasing severity of nasal-sinus disease. As a result of the increased frequency of respiratory infection associated with allergic rhinitis, these patients are at risk for damage to the olfactory epithelium.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2002

Taste perception of cigarette smokers.

In this work we have ventured to establish the dependencies between taste sensitivity for four basic tastes: sweet, salty, sour and bitter and endogenous factors such as sex and age and one exogenous factor, namely cigarette smoking. 471 randomly selected people, including 194 men and 277 women of different age were examined. Individual taste sensitivity was determined in the examined group, by means of saccharose, sodium chloride, acetic acid and quinine solutions. This examination showed that individual sensitivity limits range greatly to encompass varying concentrations of given taste substances. Values of individual sensitivity thresholds for stimulus substances and sensory minimum values obtained in this work showed that a substantial part of the examined people identified individual tastes at concentrations to a great extent exceeding mean threshold values. It can be supposed that those were cases of hypogeusia. There were also some instances of ageusia--a complete lack of sensitivity for sweet and bitter tastes. It was showed that cigarette smoking influences taste sensitivity of the examined people to a small extent. The changes observed were diversified and, in the majority of cases, statistically irrelevant. It can be assumed that taste receptor deficits caused by toxic compounds present in cigarette smoke are compensated by other senses. The conducted research pointed to no particular connection between identification thresholds of four basic senses and the age of the examined people. It can be caused by great diversification of individual threshold values. The research shows that, to a certain extent, taste sensitivity depends on gender. Generally speaking, women exhibit greater taste sensitivity in comparison to men. It seems that these differences are of hormonal nature.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2000

Cost-benefit analysis potential in feeding behavior of a predatory snail by integration of hunger, taste, and pain.

Hunger/satiation state interacts with appetitive and noxious stimuli to determine feeding and avoidance responses. In the predatory marine snail Pleurobranchaea californica, food chemostimuli induced proboscis extension and biting at concentration thresholds that varied directly with satiation state. However, food stimuli also tended to elicit avoidance behavior (withdrawal and avoidance turns) at concentration thresholds that were relatively low and fixed. When the feeding threshold for active feeding (proboscis extension with biting) was exceeded, ongoing avoidance and locomotion were interrupted and suppressed. Noxious chemostimuli usually stimulated avoidance, but, in animals with lower feeding thresholds for food stimuli, they often elicited feeding behavior. Thus, sensory pathways mediating appetitive and noxious stimuli may have dual access to neural networks of feeding and avoidance behavior, but their final effects are regulated by satiation state. These observations suggest that a simple cost-benefit computation regulates behavioral switching in the animal's foraging behavior, where food stimuli above or below the incentive level for feeding tend to induce feeding or avoidance, respectively. This decision mechanism can weigh the animal's need for nutrients against the potential risk from other predators and the cost of relative energy outlay in an attack on prey. Stimulation of orienting and attack by low-level noxious stimuli in the hungriest animals may reflect risk-taking that can enhance prey capture success. A simple, hedonically structured neural network model captures this computation.

Animals↗
PubMed1997

Detection of a target taste in a complex masker.

Detection thresholds for sodium chloride were compared in aqueous solution, in mixture with a sucrose masker, in mixture with a citric acid masker, and in mixture with both of these maskers together. Separately the two maskers raised the threshold of sodium chloride by three to four times, and together by over nine times, a result consistent with independence (additivity) of the two masking effects. To achieve comparable masking with either sucrose alone or with citric acid alone would require increasing their masking concentrations by about ten times. Hence multiple masking can be a far more efficient means of concealing a taste, whether an unpleasant one (e.g. the bitter taste of medicine) or a pleasant one (e.g. a salty or sweet condiment). Multiple masking has dietary and culinary significance, especially for middle aged and elderly persons concerned about salt intake, because their thresholds for NaCl, whether with or without maskers, are typically two or three times higher than those of youthful persons.

Adult↗
PubMed1987

Taste aversion learning produced by combined treatment with subthreshold radiation and lithium chloride.

These experiments were designed to determine whether treatment with two subthreshold doses of radiation or lithium chloride, either alone or in combination, could lead to taste aversion learning. The first experiment determined the thresholds for a radiation-induced taste aversion at 15-20 rad and for lithium chloride at 0.30-0.45 mEq/kg. In the second experiment it was shown that exposing rats to two doses of 15 rad separated by up to 3 hr produced a taste aversion. Treatment with two injections of lithium chloride (0.30 mEq/kg) did not produce a significant reduction in preference. Combined treatment with radiation and lithium chloride did produce a taste aversion when the two treatments were administered within 1 hr of each other. The results are discussed in terms of the implications of these findings for understanding the nature of the unconditioned stimuli leading to the acquisition of a conditioned taste aversion.

Animals↗
PubMed2006

Radiotherapy-induced taste impairment.

Changes in taste perception occur in a significant proportion of cancer patients. Among cancer patients treated with radiotherapy (RT) in head and neck area, the vast majority reports an altered taste sense during and after treatments. Taste impairment starts a few weeks after the beginning of irradiation, and almost all such patients experienced loss of taste acuity at a dose of 60 Gy. Some studies investigated the four basic taste intensities (sweet, salty, sour and bitter) and the umami taste, and several of these reports identified diminished threshold sensitivity for at least one taste quality. Six months to one year after RT, taste acuity recovers to its previous level in many patients, but some patients show incomplete or no recovery even several years later. Taste impairment has profound effects on patients' quality of life because is associated with weight loss through reduced appetite and altered patterns of food intake. Damage to the major salivary glands during head and neck RT leads to disturbance in taste acuity. With the implementation of new radiation techniques, such as conformal and intensity-modulated RT in head and neck irradiation, the late-radiation effects can probably be reduced, but the remaining sequelae are still bothersome to the patients.

Head and Neck Neoplasms↗
PubMed2004

Taste and smell disturbance with the alpha-adrenoceptor agonist midodrine.

OBJECTIVE: To report a case of a disturbance of taste and smell associated with the alpha-adrenoceptor agonist midodrine. CASE SUMMARY: A 64-year-old white man with autonomic failure was started on midodrine 5 mg/day as treatment for orthostatic hypotension. After 3 months, the dose was increased to 12.5 mg/day, whereupon he noted a new onset of taste and smell disturbance. These symptoms made eating so unpleasant that the man greatly reduced his food intake, leading to significant weight loss. In addition, he experienced well-recognized adverse effects of midodrine, such as scalp pruritus, after the dose increase. All symptoms resolved with a dose reduction of midodrine (to 5 mg/day), and the patient increased his food intake, resulting in a return to his initial body weight. DISCUSSION: Midodrine is commonly associated with dose-dependent adverse effects, such as scalp pruritus and cutis anserina. Disorders of taste and smell have not been previously reported with midodrine, although it has been suggested that other sympathomimetic drugs may have effects on the olfactory threshold. Severe disorders of taste and smell may impact not only on a patient's quality of life, but also on their physical well-being, with significant weight loss being reported in this case. According to the Naranjo probability scale, this patient's taste and smell disturbance was probably associated with midodrine. CONCLUSIONS: The use of midodrine may be associated with taste and smell disturbance. This case suggests that such an association is likely to be dose dependent.

Adrenergic alpha-Antagonists↗