Taste Function in Xerostomia before and after Treatment with a Saliva Substitute Containing Carboxymethylcellulose
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND AIM: The feeling of a dry mouth may affect individual dietary habits, nutritional status, oral hygiene, speech, and gustatory sensitivity. The present study aimed to specifically investigate gustatory function before and after saliva replacement therapy. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Whole-mouth gustatory function was assessed in 25 patients suffering from xerostomia (6 male, 19 female; age range 42-82 years) before and after 4 to 6 weeks of saliva replacement therapy using a preparation containing carboxymethylcellulose. The results were compared with those from healthy controls matched for age and sex (6 male, 19 female; age range 42-82 years). Using a whole-mouth test, gustatory function was assessed for sucrose, citric acid, sodium chloride, and caffeine. RESULTS: All subjects detected the four taste qualities at the highest concentration. However, the patients with xerostomia had lower scores in the gustatory test compared with the healthy controls (p < .001). No correlation was found between gustatory scores and the duration or severity of the disorder. Therapy had no effect on measured gustatory function (p = .33); however, saliva replacement led to a significant improvement in other xerostomia-related symptoms (p < .001). CONCLUSIONS: This study confirms previous work indicating that xerostomia is accompanied by decreased gustatory sensitivity. Lubricants based on carboxymethylcellulose may have a positive effect on some of the symptoms of xerostomia. However, these "simple" lubricants based on carboxymethylcellulose have little or no effect on whole-mouth gustatory function.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".