Prospective Monocentric Study of Taste in Patients With Minor or Major Cognitive Disorders Such as Alzheimer's, Through the Analysis of Gustatory Evoked Potentials.

Summary

Approximately 24 million people worldwide suffer from dementia, with Alzheimer's disease being the most common cause. Alzheimer's disease typically progresses in three stages: presymptomatic, prodromal ("early onset" or minor cognitive impairment) and major cognitive impairment with loss of autonomy and significant psycho-behavioral symptoms. Efforts to counteract its expansion are increasing, and there is a need for biomarkers to identify the disease in its earliest stage in order to provide prompt treatment.

Faced with a episodic memory disorder, it is possible, thanks to certain criteria, highlighted by neuroimaging, or by biomarkers obtained by biological analysis of cerebrospinal fluid (during a lumbar puncture), to detect Alzheimer's disease from the prodromal stage, or even earlier. The main limitation of these criteria is their invasive nature. Other non-invasive biomarkers would therefore be useful to help diagnose Alzheimer's disease at an early stage. Gustatory evoked potentials (GEP), a technique for exploring taste sensory pathways, could meet these needs.

Indeed, GEPs are a method of exploring the gustatory sensory pathway based on the recording of cerebral electrical activity by electroencephalography (EEG). It is a painless, accessible, inexpensive and non-invasive technique. The alteration of gustatory functions is present in many neurological conditions, but often takes second place to sensory or motor symptoms. Rare studies have studied taste in patients with Alzheimer's disease, but they have demonstrated, using subjective tests only, an early gustatory impairment linked to a degeneration of the gustatory cortex. It was observed that the performance of subjects with minor or major cognitive impairment was weaker than that of healthy subjects, without the patient being aware of these taste disorders.

The aim of the study is to explore taste functions in patients with minor cognitive impairment, major cognitive impairment such as mild Alzheimer's disease, by comparing them to healthy subjects. For this purpose, we wish to compare the results of subjective taste tests (tasting solutions, especially salty ones, answering food preference questionnaires), parameters of taste evoked potentials recorded by electrodes stuck on the scalp and hormonal parameters obtained by blood sampling, between the three groups of subjects mentioned.

Conditions

• Cognitive Disorders

Interventions

BIOLOGICAL

Blood sampling

Fasting blood glucose, dosage of acylated and non-acylated ghrelin, leptin, insulin and serotonin.

OTHER

Cognitive Assessment

QPC Cognitive complaint questionnaire, CDR functional autonomy scales and IADL 4 items, MMSE cognitive scores, Dubois 5-word test, clock test, BREF, Isaacs test, BARD naming battery and MADRS depression scale

OTHER

Subjective taste tests

Scales of taste perceptive intensity, taste pleasure, hunger sensation (visual analogue scales from 0 to 10 cm) and food preferences on the one hand, and on the other hand, subjective tests of taste threshold determination by triangular tests of increasing sugar solution concentrations.

OTHER

Objective taste tests

Recording of gustatory evoked potentials

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Dijon

  lead OTHER

Study Design

Allocation

NON_RANDOMIZED

Purpose

DIAGNOSTIC

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2021-03-03

Primary Completion

2021-06-17

Completion

2021-06-17

Countries

• France

Study Locations