Self-Administered Taste Testing Without Water: Normative Data for the 53-Item Waterless Empirical Taste Test (WETT®).

Abstract

Background: According to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), more than 20 million Americans suffer from chronic taste problems. Unfortunately, quantitative testing is rarely performed, self-reports are inaccurate, and "taste" is often confused with olfaction-dependent flavors. Clearly, a reliable, practical, and norm-based clinical taste test is sorely needed.

Methods: The recently developed 53-item Waterless Empirical Taste Test (WETT^®) was self-administered by 1392 healthy subjects (493 men and 899 women) spanning the ages of 10-94. Normative percentile ranks were developed, and the influences of sex, age, COVID-19 infection history, and smoking behavior were evaluated using general linear models.

Results: On average, WETT^® scores declined with age beginning in the 30s and were lower in men than in women (ps < 0.0001), with the sex difference most apparent between 40 and 70 years of age. Subtest scores for the five basic taste qualities followed similar age- and sex-related patterns. No influences of COVID-19 history were evident. Smokers had lower salty (NaCl) and bitter (caffeine) WETT^® scores than nonsmokers. The developed normative tables make it possible to determine a patient's absolute dysfunction score as well as a relative score based on age- and sex-related percentiles.

Conclusion: This study provides normative data based on 1392 healthy subjects for interpreting a patient's performance on a reliable self-administered taste test that requires no liquid stimuli or rinses. Its findings support the view that both sex and age are significant determinants of taste function in the general population.