Department of Neuroradiology, Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich, Germany.
Rhinology. 2010 Sep;48(3):368-73. doi: 10.4193/Rhino09.212.
The olfactory test battery Sniffin’ Sticks is a test of nasal chemosensory function that is based on pen-like devices for odour presentation. It consists of three olfactory subtests: threshold, discrimination, and identification. The detection threshold can be measured using two different odorants--n-butanol or PEA (phenylethyl alcohol). Both tasks are commonly applied in published studies, but little is known about the formal comparison of values obtained using them. Unlike the Sniffin’ Sticks with n-butanol as odorant, there is poor validation for the threshold subtest with the odorant PEA. The purpose of this study was to compare these two different odorants. Both odorants were applied to 100 normosmic, healthy subjects (50 females). The experiment was divided into two sessions performed on two different days. After each threshold test the discrimination and identification subtests were conducted. We obtained significant differences in detection thresholds of PEA and n-butanol. The mean score of PEA threshold and PEA TDI (sum of threshold, discrimination, identification) was significantly higher compared to n-butanol. No significant correlation between individual PEA and n-butanol thresholds was observed. The differences between both odorants indicate that a formal validation of the Sniffin’ Sticks with PEA as odorant for probing olfactory thresholds may be required.
嗅觉测试工具“嗅棒”（Sniffin’ Sticks）是一种基于笔状设备进行气味呈现的鼻腔化学感觉功能测试。它由三个嗅觉子测试组成：阈值、辨别和识别。检测阈值可以使用两种不同的气味剂——正丁醇或 PEA（苯乙醇）来测量。这两个任务在已发表的研究中都有应用，但对于使用它们获得的数值的正式比较知之甚少。与使用嗅棒作为气味剂测量阈值不同，使用 PEA 作为气味剂的阈值子测试的验证效果较差。本研究旨在比较这两种不同的气味剂。两种气味剂均应用于 100 名嗅觉正常、健康的受试者（50 名女性）。实验分为两个阶段，在两天内进行。每次阈值测试后，进行辨别和识别子测试。我们发现 PEA 和正丁醇的检测阈值存在显著差异。与正丁醇相比，PEA 阈值和 PEA TDI（阈值、辨别和识别的总和）的平均得分明显更高。个体 PEA 和正丁醇阈值之间没有观察到显著相关性。两种气味剂之间的差异表明，可能需要对以 PEA 作为探测嗅觉阈值的嗅棒进行正式验证。
