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| Poster #209 Molecular mechanisms of olfactory training in dysosmic and normosmic individuals |
| Ronja Hopf1, Emely Kruschwitz2, Thomas Hummel2, Dietmar Krautwurst1 1Leibniz-Institute for Food Systems Biology at the Technical University of Munich, Freising, --, Germany 2Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Faculty of Medicine Carl Gustav Carus, Smell & Taste Clinic, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, --, Germany |
Olfactory dysfunction can be found in about one-fifth of the population (I. Croy et al., Chem Senses, 2014). Olfactory training with four selected odorants has emerged as a common and effective treatment for these disorders (M. Pieniak et al., Neurosci Biobehav Rev, 2022). A positive training effect on the sensory abilities of patients experiencing general anosmia or hyposmia was not improved using more than four odorants (N. Power Guerra et al., Eur Arch Otorhinolaryngol, 2024). The underlying molecular mechanisms, however, remain unclear. Here we show that positive sensory effects of a typical four-item olfactory training with dysosmic and normosmic individuals is paralleled by a highly significant increase (n=23, p<0.001, Wilcoxon signed-rank test) in their olfactory epithelium transcript levels (Rt-ddPCR) of broadly tuned odorant receptor OR2W1, which is known to respond to all four training odorants (F. Haag et al., Food Chem, 2022). No such effect was observed with an increased number of training odorants. These findings suggest a link between olfactory training and changes in odorant receptor transcript levels. Future work will explore potential allosteric interactions between training substances at the receptor level. |