Smoking may dull taste buds

Monday 31st August 2009 HCFI New Delhi: Smoking dampens the ability to taste, said Dr KK Aggarwal President, Heart Care Foundation of India, BSNL Dil Ka Darbar, MTNL Perfect Heart Mela and Director, IMA AKN Sinha Institute. The forthcoming BSNL Darbar will have a special session on how to quit smoking.

In a study published in the journal BMC Ear, Nose and Throat Disorders, doctors used electrical stimulation to test the taste threshold of 62 Greek participants. Applying an electrical current to the tongue generates a unique metallic taste. Measuring the amount of current required before a person perceives this taste enables researchers to determine taste sensitivity. The 28 smokers in the study scored worse on this test than the 34 nonsmokers. The doctors than measured the number and shape of a type of taste bud called fungiform papillae. They found that the smokers had flatter fungiform papillae, with a reduced blood supply. Nicotine may cause functional and morphological alterations of papillae, at least in young adults.