Home screening of taste and oral trigeminal function: a feasibility study

data from paper Home screening of taste and oral trigeminal function: a feasibility studyTomer Green, Mariano Mastinu, Anne Wolf, Anna Oleszkiewicz, Anna Aronis, Thomas Hummel, M Yanina Pepino, Masha Y NivPMC11392964 PMID: 3863027510.1007/s00405-024-08654-5 We performed simple sensory tests in lab setting (assisted) vs. unassisted testing at home, and compared the results with self-reports ability to taste and smell. Using paper strips impregnated with sweet, bitter, salty, or sour tastants, and with two trigeminal stimuli (capsaicin, tannins) in high and low concentrations, we assessed gustatory and trigeminal function in 74 participants (47 women) in the lab, where paper strips were administered by an experimenter, and in 77 participants (59 women) at home, where they self-administered the test. Participants One hundred and twenty-eight participants (Table 1) were recruited on the university campus to perform the test either in an assisted setting in the lab (n = 74) or in an unassisted setting at home (n = 77). Exclusion criteria consisted of pregnancy, allergies to foods or drugs, hypo/hyperglycemia, kidney failure, and significant heart or blood pressure problems. These participants were tested in following groups: Group 1—lab condition (n = 49, 28.1 ± 5.8 years, 29 females) tested between June and July 2021. Group 2—home condition (n = 54, 24.7 ± 2.8 years, 42 females), tested between October and December 2021. To assess the test retest reliability, another group of participants (Group 3) completed both the test in the lab (n = 25, 17 females) and at home on the following day (n = 23, two participants had technical difficulties completing the test at home), in July 2022. Sensory testing The participants performed a taste strips identification test including four tastants (bitter, sweet, salty, or sour) and two trigeminally active compounds (capsaicin and tannin) at high and at low concentrations based on the extended version of Seven-iTT [18]. Subsequentially, they rated intensity and pleasantness for each taste strip from 1 to 5. Sample presentation followed the same order as in [18], which allows for further comparison between the two experiments, with gustatory stimuli preceding trigeminal exposure [23, 24], and low concentrations preceded the high concentrations [17]. The concentrations of the solutions that were used to impregnate the paper strips: trip impregnation Gustatory Trigeminal Sour Sweet Bitter Salty Spicy Astringent Compound Citric acid (g/ml) Sucrose (g/ml) Quinine hydrochloride (g/ml) Sodium chloride (g/ml) Capsaicin (g/ml) Tannin (g/ml) Concentration Low 0.05 0.05 0.0004 0.016 2.47×10−5 0.1 High 0.30 0.40 0.0060 0.250 2.47×10−4 0.2 Only group 1 tasted tannin-impregnated papers, which were later excluded from analyses and from further tests due to its brown color which was visually distinct from all other strips. Strips were prepared in the Technische Universität Dresden.