| Summary: | Individual differences in sweet taste sensitivity can affect dietary preferences as well as nutritional status. Despite the lack of consensus, it is believed that sweet taste is impacted by genetic and environmental variables. Here we determined the effect of well-established factors influencing the general taste variability, such as gender and fungiform papillae density, specific genetic variants (SNPs of <i>TAS1R2</i> and <i>TAS1R3</i> receptors genes), and non-specific genetic factors (PROP phenotype and genotype), on the threshold and suprathreshold sweet taste sensitivity. Suprathreshold measurements showed that the sweet taste response increased in a dose-dependent manner, and this was related to PROP phenotype, gender, <i>rs35874116</i> SNP in the <i>TAS1R2</i> gene, and <i>rs307355</i> SNP in the <i>TAS1R3</i> gene. The threshold values and density of fungiform papillae exhibited a strong correlation, and both varied according to PROP phenotype. Our data confirm the role of PROP taste status in the sweet perception related to fungiform papilla density, show a higher sweet sensitivity in females who had lower BMI than males, and demonstrate for the first time the involvement of the <i>rs35874116</i> SNP of <i>TAS1R2</i> in the sweet taste sensitivity of normal weight subjects with body mass index (BMI) ranging from 20.2 to 24.8 kg/m<sup>2</sup>. These results may have an important impact on nutrition and health mostly in subjects with low taste ability for sweets and thus with high vulnerability to developing obesity or metabolic disease.
|
|---|