Technique to collect fungiform (taste) papillae from human tongue.

The sense of taste is critical for human life. It informs the body about the quality of food that will be potentially ingested and stimulates metabolic processes that prepare the alimentary canal for digestion. Steady progress is being made towards understanding the early biochemical and molecular events underlying taste transduction (for a review, Breslin and Spector, 2008).

The T cells in peripheral taste tissue of healthy human adults: predominant memory T cells and Th-1 cells.

A healthy taste system is important to the maintenance of nutrition and overall quality of life, and taste disorders are associated with many inflammatory states. We previously determined the immune cells in normal human gustatory tissue; they are predominantly dendritic cells and CD4 T cells with a few macrophages and B lymphocytes present. There are, however, few reports of the subtypes of resident lymphocytes in or near taste tissues.

Immune cells of the human peripheral taste system: dominant dendritic cells and CD4 T cells.

Taste loss or alterations can seriously impact health and quality of life due to the resulting negative influence on eating habits and nutrition. Infection and inflammation are thought to be some of the most common causes of taste perception disorders. Supporting this view, neuro-immune interactions in the peripheral gustatory system have been identified, underlying the importance of this tissue in mucosal immunity, but we have little understanding of how these interactions influence taste perception directly or indirectly.

Mesenchymoma: an unusual tumour of the lip.

The purpose of this paper is to present a case report of a benign mesenchymoma involving the lip. A brief review of relevant literature is presented.

Analysis of a human fungiform papillae cDNA library and identification of taste-related genes.

Various genes related to early events in human gustation have recently been discovered, yet a thorough understanding of taste transduction is hampered by gaps in our knowledge of the signaling chain. As a first step toward gaining additional insight, the expression specificity of genes in human taste tissue needs to be determined. To this end, a fungiform papillae cDNA library has been generated and analyzed.

The utility of tolonium chloride rinse in the diagnosis of recurrent or second primary cancers in patients with prior upper aerodigestive tract cancer.

Background: The clinical utility of tolonium chloride rinse was compared with unaided visual examination alone in the diagnosis of oral carcinoma in patients previously treated for carcinoma of the upper aerodigestive tract.

Methods: A total of 668 patients were enrolled in this multicenter study. At each site, an oral clinical visual examination was completed by one investigator followed by tolonium chloride rinse and examination by a second investigator blinded to the examination findings of the first investigator.