Ontogeny of Odor Liking during Childhood and Its Relation to Language Development

Chem. Senses (2010)doi: 10.1093/chemse/bjq101

1. Fanny Rinck, 
2. Melissa Barkat-Defradas, 
3. Amandine Chakirian, 
4. Pauline Joussain, 
5. Fanny Bourgeat, 
6. Marc Thévenet, 
7. Catherine Rouby and  M
8. oustafa Bensafi

Abstract

One important aspect of odor hedonics is its plasticity during human development. 

The present study set out to probe the modulators of such olfactory change during that period by testing the hypothesis that language and semantic representations of objects are strong organizers of odor liking. To this end, 15 three-year-old children were tested in a longitudinal study. Participants were exposed to exactly the same 12 odorants once a year over a 3-year period. At each experimental session, they were asked to answer 2 questions: 1) “Do you like or dislike this odor?” and 2) “Can you tell me what it is?” The level of language production was assessed on a standardized test. The 3-year-old children were found to categorize the same number of odorants as liked and as disliked. The follow-up study, in contrast, showed that at 5 years of age they categorized more of these odors as liked and that the shift was significant only in the children with higher language production skills. Taken as a whole, these findings suggest that the 3- to 5-year age range, when children begin to master language, is a turning point in the construction of olfactory hedonic categories during childhood.

Medical treatment of adenoid hypertrophy with "fluticasone propionate nasal drops"

International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology (Apr 2010)

Demirhan H, Aksoy F, Ozturan O, Yildirim YS, Veyseller B

BACKGROUND: Adenoid hypertrophy treatment for children is generally planned in accordance with the degree of airway obstruction and related morbidity. If surgical treatment is indicated, the individual risk/benefit analysis of patients should be assessed in terms of anesthetic and postoperative complications. Although there are few alternative treatment options, these may be considered as a nonsurgical approach in less serious cases. Accordingly, studies about intranasal steroid applications under various protocols have been presented.

STUDY DESIGN: The prospective, randomized, placebo-controlled study.

SETTING: Tertiary referral center.

PATIENTS AND METHODS: Patients indicated for surgery were randomly divided into two groups. The study group was treated by fluticasone propionate nasal drops (NSD-nasal steroid drops) of 400mug/day for 8 weeks. The control group was treated by normal saline (NS) in the same way. All the patients were called for follow-up every 4 weeks.

RESULTS: At the end of 8 weeks, statistically significant improvement (p<0.05) was observed in the NSD treated group compared to the NS treated group in terms of nasal airway obstruction, mouth breathing, speech abnormalities, apnea and night cough. At the end of 8 weeks, the average total symptoms score of the NSD treated group dropped from 13.7 to 2.9 while the NS treated group's score changed from 14.8 to 14.6. After 8 weeks of NSD treatment the initial adenoid/choana (A/C) rate had dropped from 87 to 56% and a total decrease of 35.6% was observed. After 8 weeks of NS treatment the A/C rate dropped from 87 to 85% and a total decrease of 2.2% was observed.

CONCLUSIONS: In this study, the effect of fluticasone propionate nasal drops on adenoid hypertrophy is examined for the first time. This method provides an effective alternative to surgical treatment in children with adenoid hypertrophy. With the protocol applied in this study 76% of the patients were eliminated the surgery and removed from the surgical waiting list.