Gout Treatment Modulates Bitterness Receptor

PHILADELPHIAOur ability to detect bitterness evolved as a way to keep us from eating poisonous substances. But now that were no longer foraging for our own food, our bitterness receptor often gets in the way of eating healthy foods, like spinach, broccoli, kale and other good-for-you green things. Scientists at Monell Chemical Senses Center, knowing that bitter perception can potentially get in the way of proper nutrition, set out to find a way to control bitter taste. What they found, unexpectedly, was that an existing treatment for gout, called probenecid, p-(dipropylsulfamoyl)benzoic acid, inhibits bitterness receptors on the tongue. Unlike the bitterness blocker recently developed by scientists at Givaudan, probenecid does not physically block interaction of bitter molecules with the bitterness receptors primary binding site. Instead, it binds elsewhere on the receptor to modulate the receptors ability to interact with the bitter molecule.

According to the researchers, the study, published in PloS ONE, identifies probenecid as a pharmacological tool for understanding the cell biology of bitter taste and as a lead for the development of broad specificity bitter blockers to improve nutrition and medical compliance."