Individual Differences in Chemosensory Perception Amongst Cancer Patients Undergoing Chemotherapy: A Narrative Review

Abstract

Chemotherapy is an aggressive form of treatment for cancer and its toxicity directly affects the eating behavior of many patients, usually by adversely affecting their sense of smell and/or taste. These sensory alterations often lead to serious nutritional deficiencies that can jeopardize the patient’s recovery, and even continue to affect their lives once treatment has terminated. Importantly, however, not all patients suffer from such alterations to their chemical senses; and those who do, do not necessarily describe the side effects in quite the same way, nor suffer from them with equal intensity. The origin of these individual differences between cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy treatment has not, as yet, been studied in detail. This review is therefore designed to encourage future research that can help to address the perceptual/sensory problems (and the consequent malnutrition) identified amongst this group of patients in a more customized/personalized manner. In particular, by providing an overview of the possible causes of these large individual differences that have been reported in the literature. For this reason, in addition to the narrative bibliographic review, several possible strategies that could help to improve the chemosensory perception of food are proposed.

Acknowledgments

The authors have no particular grants to acknowledge.

Author’s Contribution

All authors wrote, revised and approved the final version of the manuscript.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a “Proyectos Singulares” grant from The Spanish Society Against Cancer (AECC) to JN (Grant number: PS15153336NAVA).