Quantitative analysis of taste disorder in COVID-19 patients, the hypersensitivity to salty quality.

Recently, many of the studies have illustrated that the new pandemic SARS-CoV-2 can affect Central Nervous System through the olfactory bulb. In addition to investigating anosmia or hyposmia induced by this virus, a quantitative analysis was needed to clarify the taste and smell disorder of the new coronavirus. The four basic taste quality with five concentrations for sweet, sour, bitter, and salty were administered to 75 subjects divided into three groups: COVID-19 patients with taste disorder, COVID-19 patients without taste disorder, and control group. The results indicated the increment of sweet (2.68 ± 0.14), sour (3.34 ± 0.12) and bitter (3.39 ± 0.2) thresholds in COVID-19 patients with taste disorder in comparison with patients without taste disorder that the threshold were: 2 ± 0.16, 2.11 ± 0.2 and 2.55 ± 0.5 for sweet, sour, and bitter respectively. On the other hand, the patients inversely showed a significant decrease in the salty taste threshold (0.51 ± 0.03) compared to COVID-19 positive control groups (1.11 ± 0.11). Additionally, despite taste disorder in almost all of the patients with smell deficiency, only 30% of cases with taste disorder reported smell deficiency. It may be concluded that some of the taste disorders in patients with COVID-19 disorder could be associated with taste receptors dysfunction or the spread of infection to the cranial nerves responsible for the conduction of tastes sensation.

The effect of ELF magnetic field on tumor growth after electrochemotherapy.

From a fundamental point of view, chemotherapy is the most widely used treatment for cancers despite its side effects on normal cells and tissues. Electrochemotherapy (ECT) is a method for increasing the permeability of cancer cells to drugs and, hence, decreasing their dosage. It apparently creates electropores on the cell membrane using electric pulses. ECT can decrease tumor volume; but this effect is not permanent, and partial regrowth has been reported. The aim of this study was to investigate the potential of magnetic fields in preventing the regrowth of tumors after ECT. Tumoral Balb/c mice were exposed to a magnetic field (15 mT, 50 Hz) for 12 days after treating additionally with 70 V/cm electric pulses and bleomycin at the first day. The magnetic field caused a significant reduction in tumor volumes, while there was no significant difference between the ECT and the electroporation with ECT and magnetic field groups. The exploited magnetic field (15 mT, 50 Hz) could decrease the tumor growth rate significantly, without any effect on ECT efficiency.

Magnetic fields with frequency of 217 Hz can reduce cell apoptosis caused by electrochemotherapy.

Nowadays, due to the wide use of mobile phones, extensive studies have been carried out on the effects of magnetic field (MF) on public health. In this paper, we study the effect of 217 Hz MF similar to that generated by GSM900 mobile phones on cancer and healthy cells treated with electric pulse and cytotoxic drug. The experiments conducted include exposure to (a) electric pulses alone (4000 square-wave electric pulses with low amplitude of 70 V/cm and frequency of 5 kHz), (b) electric pulses following MF exposure, (c) electrochemotherapy (electric pulses and cytotoxic drug) alone and (d) MF exposure with subsequent electrochemotherapy. The results indicate that the percentage of apoptosis decreases significantly (p < 0.05) in treatment groups using electrochemotherapy after MF exposure compared to that in treatment groups using electrochemotherapy alone. We observed that 217 Hz MF similar to that generated by GSM900 mobile phones can incur resistance of the cells in response to electric pulses. Our findings implied the existence of amplitude window effect in alternations induced by extremely low-frequency MF.

Tumor growth inhibited by low-voltage amplitude and 5-kHz frequency electrochemotherapy.

The most important unpleasant sensation of electrochemotherapy is muscle contraction. One of the causes of this discomfort is electrochemotherapy in the low-frequency range (1 Hz). To resolve this problem, there are two solutions: first, increasing the repetition frequency of electric pulses above the tetanic frequency and, second, reducing the voltage amplitude. This study examines the antitumor effectiveness of treatment using low electric fields and high frequency in the presence and absence of chemotherapeutic agents. High-voltage amplitude electrochemotherapy was performed by eight pulses, at 1,000 V/cm, of 100-µs duration at 1-Hz and 5-kHz repetition frequency. In the low-voltage amplitude protocol, 4,000 pulses, of 100-µs duration at 5-kHz repetition frequency with 70, 100 and 150 V/cm were delivered to invasive ductal carcinoma tumors after intratumoral injection of bleomycin. Our data demonstrate significant differences in tumor volumes and the curability rate between mice treated by 70 V/cm compared to other groups. Electrochemotherapy, which is specified by a higher repetition frequency of electric pulses (5 kHz) and low voltage, inhibits tumor growth. This protocol has a comparable effect to 1-Hz pulse repetition electric pulses with high voltage. Based on these results, the 4,000 pulses of 70 V/cm with 5-kHz frequency are most effective. This protocol demonstrates inhibition of tumor growth without any need for drug administration.