Free Fatty Acids: Short Exposure Study

Purdue University

Status: Completed

Conditions: Hypogeusia

Treatments: Other: NEFA; Other: Sucrose

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT01686113

1205012317

Details and patient eligibility

About

This study will examine whether or not short, daily exposures change a person's ability to detect free fatty acids in a solution by its taste. Repeated exposure should improve a person's ability to detect free fatty acids.

Full description

The possibility that humans can taste non-esterified fatty acids (NEFA) - so-called fat taste - is a relatively new area of research. Previous work suggests that subjects require an average of between two and three testing sessions of approximately an hour each before they can reliably detect NEFA, and the average number of visits to get the lowest threshold is six. Streamlining this process is of great interest to researchers who wish to test many people as quickly as possible. Other taste qualities, including umami and sweet, have shown improvement in detection sensitivity in subjects that have undergone ten second exposures to these taste qualities for 10 days upon subsequent re-testing. We seek to determine if the same improvements can be seen with fat taste.

Enrollment: 100 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18 to 55 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• good health
• available for multiple testing visits

Exclusion criteria

• have participated in a fat taste study in the past 6 months

Trial design

Primary purpose: Basic Science

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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100 participants in 2 patient groups

NEFA

Experimental group

Description:

Participants swish and spit 5 mL of an oleic acid solution everyday for 10 days.

Treatment:

Other: NEFA

Control

Active Comparator group

Description:

Participants swish and spit 5 mL of sucrose solution everyday for 10 days.

Treatment:

Other: Sucrose