Quantitative analysis of taste disorder in COVID-19 patients, the hypersensitivity to salty quality

Asadi, M. Mahdi; Shankayi, Zeinab; Bahrami, Farideh; Mohammadzadeh, Tahereh; Amini, Hossein; Naderi, Maryam

Recently, many of studies have illustrated that the new pandemic SARS-CoV-2 can affect Central Nervous System through olfactory bulb. In addition to investigating anosmia or hyposmia induced by this virus, the quantitative analysis was needed to clarify the taste and smell disorder of the new corona virus. The four basic taste quality with five concentrations for sweet, sour, bitter and salty were administered in to 75 subject divided in to three groups: COVID-19 patients with taste disorder, COVID-19 patients without taste disorder and control group. The results indicated the increment of sweet (2.68±0.14), sour (3.34±0.12) and bitter (3.39±0.2) thresholds in COVID-19 patients with taste disorder in comparison with patients without taste disorder that the threshold were: 2±0.16, 2.11±0.2 and 2.55±0.5 for sweet, sour and bitter respectively. On the other-hand the patients inversely showed significant decrease in salty taste threshold (0.51±0.03) compared to COVID-19 positive control groups (1.11±0.11). Additionally, despite taste disorder in almost all of patients with smell deficiency, only 30% of cases with taste disorder reported smell deficiency. It may be concluded that some of taste disorders in patients with COVID-19 disorder could be associated with taste receptors dysfunction or the spread of infection to the cranial nerves responsible for conduction of tastes sensation.