A Study on the Changes in Tastes and the Appetite in Cancer Patients (CanDy-2)

[Research Purpose]

Checking out the aspect of cancer patients’ changes of taste function and garnering basic data on their favoring diets. This study researches their basic tastes, threshold values and the changes of their tastes before and during the period of cancer treatment targeting cancer patients.

[Research Needs and Brief : Importance of nutrition for cancer patients]

Cancer has steadily been the number one cause of mortality for Korean over decades. The country’s death - cause ranking released by the KOSIS in 2011 was also the number of one cause of mortality. The KOSIS released in 2011 that cancer also ranked the first with 142.8 cancer patients per 10 milion people, which is nearly 3 times bigger than cerebrovascular diseases that ranked the second (with 50.7 patients per 10 milion people) in the nation’s death cause (The nation’s cause of death in 2011, KOSIS) [1] The study released in 2006 by Newyork University, USA said that 85% among cancer patients were suffering from anorexia of rejecting food and 20% were dying of malnutrition resulting from serious lack of appetite. Malnutrition can decrease the effect of treatment and prolong the treatment period, lessen the patients’ immunity, and put them well unendurable for chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and lower their quality of life exposing them to infection and developing complications and cause their life spam to be shortened. Therefore, we know that effective and continuous way to support nutirion for cancer prevention or inhibition accounts for a very significant portion of curing cancers.

[Cancer patients’ Changes of Taste function] It is shown that changes of taste function of cancer patients occurs during the period of cacer treatment, according to several researchers. Primarily, there are lots of researches in the form of questions of whether they feel the changes of taste function[2, 3], there are papers to report the changes of taste function indicating and scoring the patients’ subjective changes of taste function depending on their intensity by using some portion of PG-SSA’s question. [4] there is a research to measure the changes of taste by using liquid state of food capable of representing 4 tastes or solutes of 4 tastes solved in water and we observe the reaction to every taste decrease. In the study of cancer patients’ the changes of taste function during the period of radiotherapy, we have observed that the reaction to every taste decreases as compared to the period before radiotherapy

[The importance of Researching the Changes of Appetite and threshold values of taste function during the period of cancer treatment]

We’ve found that systematic researches on the changes of taste function are insufficient, as previous researches consisted of subjective forms of questioning most of the patients the change of taste function. We’ve found necessary the systematic researches on the change of taste function by targeting Korean cancer patients, because the kind of daily taken-food in every country is different, in particular.

Reference

1. Korea, S., Annual Report on the Cause of Death Statistics Statistics Korea, 2011.

2. Bernhardson, B.M., C. Tishelman, and L.E. Rutqvist, Chemosensory changes experienced by patients undergoing cancer chemotherapy: a qualitative interview study. J Pain Symptom Manage, 2007. 34(4): p. 403-12.

3. Boltong, A., R. Keast, and S. Aranda, Experiences and consequences of altered taste, flavour and food hedonics during chemotherapy treatment. Support Care Cancer, 2012. 20(11): p. 2765-74.

4. Bernhardson, B.M., C. Tishelman, and L.E. Rutqvist, Self-reported taste and smell changes during cancer chemotherapy. Support Care Cancer, 2008. 16(3): p. 275-83.