Reply to ‘Olfactometric and rhinomanometric outcomes in post-menopausal women treated with hormone therapy: a prospective study’
Research Group for Sexology of the European Federation of Sexology, Department of Microbiological and Gynecological Science, University of Catania, Italy
2 To whom correspondence should be adressed. Email: cdispie{at}tin.it
Sir,
The comment of Attilio Di Spiezio Sardo et al. was very interesting. They reported the results of their studies on the effects of intranasal and transdermal estradiol on nasal mucosa of post-menopausal women, underlining the trophic improvement of the nasal respiratory epithelium during the usage of hormone replacement therapy (HRT), that could contribute to a significant reduction of the olfactory threshold. Interestingly, our previous data have shown changes in the nasal epithelium either throughout the menstrual cycle—with better trophy during the periovular phase—(Serra et al., 2004
) or in post-menopausal women treated with HRT, during which the trophism of nasal epithelium improved (Caruso et al., 2003). Moreover, in women taking oral contraceptives, unlike the rhinomanometric airflow and transnasal pressure, the olfactory threshold to odours seemed to depend on the variation of the ovarian steroids during the menstrual cycle and on the iatrogenic effects of the contraceptive pill (Caruso et al., 2001). We reported our previous results in this paper, hypothesizing—among others—‘that HRT could also act directly on neuronal transmission’ and affirmed that ‘this will be the basis of a future study using olfactory evoked potential in order to verify this hypothesis’. In fact, due to the complexity of the matter (i.e. we obtained changes in rhinomanometry on post-menopausal women, but not on women taking the contraceptive pill), up to now we cannot affirm that steroids act on one specific olfactory pathway. On the other hand, the olfactory threshold seems to depend on cyclic modulation of ovarian steroids. In our opinion, we have to study a lot of olfactory pathways to understand the role of olfaction in human reproduction.
References
Caruso S, Grillo C, Agnello C, Maiolino L, Intelisano G and Serra A (2001) A prospective study evidencing rhinomanometric and olfactometric outcomes in women taking oral contraceptives. Hum Reprod 16, 2288–2294.
Caruso S, Roccasalva L, Di Fazio E, Sapienza G, Agnello C, Ficarra S, Di Mari L and Serra A (2003) Cytologic aspects of the nasal respiratory epithelium in postmenopausal women treated with hormone therapy. Fertil Steril 79, 543–549.[CrossRef][Web of Science][Medline]
Serra A, Maiolino L, Farina M, Ficarra S, Arcidiacono A, Poli G and Caruso S (2004) Cytologic aspects of the nasal respiratory epithelium throughout the menstrual cycle. Ann Otol Rhinol Laryngol 110, 785–789.
CiteULike 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us What's this?
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||