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Heterogeneity of vulnerability and taste changes in older cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy: a latent class analysis

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Abstract

Purpose

Taste changes and vulnerability are commonly co-occurring in oncology patients undergoing chemotherapy. However, few studies explored the association and the inter-individual variability of these two conditions. This study aimed to identify heterogeneous subtypes of vulnerability and taste changes in older cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy, and explore individuals' characteristics and risk factors.

Methods

In this cross-sectional study, the latent class analysis (LCA) was conducted to identify the heterogeneous subgroups of patients with distinct vulnerability and taste change profiles. Differences in sociodemographic and clinical characteristics among the subpopulation were evaluated using parametric and nonparametric tests. Multinomial logistic regression was performed to investigate predictors of taste change-vulnerability subgroup classification.

Results

Three subgroups of those older cancer survivors were identified from the LCA: Class 1 (27.5%)-“Moderate taste change and low vulnerability”, Class 2 (29.0%)-“Low taste change and moderate vulnerability”, Class 3 (43.5%)-“High taste change and high vulnerability”. 98.9% of Class 3 reported taste changes and 54.0% reported vulnerability. Results from multinomial logistic regression indicated that patients in Class 3 were more likely to report experiencing mouth dryness and high blood pressure, and have received more than 3 cycles of chemotherapy.

Conclusion

The findings could provide new insights into the association between taste changes and vulnerability in older cancer adults receiving chemotherapy. Identifying different latent classes of taste changes and vulnerability would be helpful for developing interventions tailored to the heterogeneous survivors.

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Data Availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available but are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Funding

This study was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 82172583), Top Talent Support Program for young and middle-aged people of Wuxi Health Committee (BJ 2020041), Key Speciality of Precision Medicine from Wuxi Health and Family Planning Commission (J 201807).

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Author notes

  1. Min Zhu and Teng Wang are contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Wuxi School of Medicine, Jiangnan University, Wuxi, 214122, Jiangsu, China

    Min Zhu, Jun Sun, Zhou Zhou, Danhui Wang & Liping Teng

  2. Department of Oncology, Affiliated Hospital of Jiangnan University, Wuxi, 214122, Jiangsu, China

    Teng Wang

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  1. Min Zhu
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  3. Jun Sun
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  4. Zhou Zhou
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Contributions

MZ, TW, JS, ZZ and DW were responsible for patient recruitment and data collection. LT guided MZ and TW with the data analysis. MZ, TW and LT contributed to writing the paper. All authors reviewed the findings, agreed with the interpretation, and read and approved the final version.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Liping Teng.

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Ethics approval

This study was performed in line with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. Approval was granted by the Ethics Committee of Jiangnan University (approval no. JNU20210918IRB04).

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Informed consent was obtained from all participants included in the study.

Consent to publish All of the authors read the final version of the paper and approved its submission for publication.

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The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Zhu, M., Wang, T., Sun, J. et al. Heterogeneity of vulnerability and taste changes in older cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy: a latent class analysis. Support Care Cancer 31, 392 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00520-023-07862-9

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