Olfactory deficits in boys with cleft palate.

An odor identification task was used to determine whether individuals with cleft palate (with or without cleft lip) also have an increased prevalence of olfactory deficits. Olfactory responses of 35 affected subjects (7 to 22 years of age) were compared with those of 68 subjects of comparable age without cleft palates. Subjects were requested to identify the smell of ten common household odors. They selected their responses from an alphabetized list of the test odorants. After a practice trial, the set of odorants was presented five times in randomized sequences. The percentage of correct responses increased with age for prepubertal and pubertal subjects without cleft palates. Although the olfactory scores of girls without cleft palates continued to increase after puberty, this trend was absent in boys. On the average, the girls with cleft palates, compared with only three of 34 boys without cleft palates, had olfactory scores less than 60% correct. There was no evidence of heterogeneity in the magnitude or direction of the relationship between any of the subtypes of cleft palate and olfactory dysfunction. In this study, cleft palate is more strongly associated with olfactory deficits in boys than in girls, suggesting the possibility that the deficit may be a sex-influenced trait.