Gustatory Loss and Recovery of Patients with Middle Ear Surgery

描述(申请人提供)：口味是决定接受或拒绝哪些食物的最重要的感觉。它是决定什么进入胃里，什么被拒绝的最终仲裁者。我们认为这是因为，总的来说，食物的味道是其特性和可接受性的最重要标志。在这一点上，有味觉主诉的化学感觉临床患者报告体重减轻的可能性是那些有嗅觉障碍的患者的两倍(40%比20%)，而且不太喜欢食物。因此，我们希望了解中耳手术中发生医源性味觉神经损伤患者的化学感觉味觉功能的丧失和恢复情况。鼓索(CT)神经支配舌头前2/3的味蕾，在手术过程中可能受损。作为一个临床问题，医生无法为他们的患者预测潜在味觉丧失的程度或化学特异性，也无法准确地预测他们的正常功能何时恢复。从基础研究的角度来看，这项拟议的工作将调查人类脑神经和感受器末端器官重新生长和再生的潜力。更好地了解一个完全再生的器官和组织有很大的潜力帮助我们理解其他不能自发再生的人类组织是如何被诱导再生的。这项建议的目的是探索味觉的丧失和恢复作为手术中发生的CT神经损伤类型以及伴随而来的人类味蕾变化的函数。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Taste is the paramount sense governing which foods are accepted or rejected. It is the final arbiter of what goes into the stomach and what is rejected. We believe this is because the taste of food is, in general, the most important marker of its identity and acceptability. To this point, chemosensory clinical patients who present with taste complaints are twice as likely to report weight loss as those who present with olfactory dysfunction (40% vs. 20%) and enjoy food less. We, therefore, wish to understand the loss and recovery of chemosensory taste function in patients who have iatrogenic taste nerve damage during middle ear surgery. The chorda tympani (CT) nerve, which innervates the taste buds of the anterior two-thirds of the tongue, may be damaged during this surgery. As a clinical problem, the physician is unable to predict for their patient the degree or chemospecificity of their potential taste loss or precisely when normal function will return. From a basic research perspective, the proposed work will investigate the potential for a human cranial nerve and receptor end organs to re-grow and regenerate. A better understanding of a fully regenerating organ and tissue has great potential to help us understand how other human tissues, which do not spontaneously regenerate, may be induced to do so. The Aims of this proposal are to explore the loss and recovery of taste perception as a function of the type of CT nerve damage that occurs during surgery and the concomitant changes to human taste buds.