BEIJING, May 18 (Xinhua) -- Chinese researchers have found that stimulation of olfaction, or the sense of smell, can directly affect the development of malignant glioma, a lethal brain tumor.
According to the study paper published in the journal Nature, only half of all glioma patients survive more than 15 months from the discovery of their tumor.
Previously, it remained unclear whether external sensory stimuli could directly affect the genesis of malignant glioma under normal living conditions.
A research team from Zhejiang University built a mouse model simulating the genesis of glioma in the human brain, and they found glioma preferentially emerged in the olfactory bulb, a neural structure of the forebrain.
Further experiments showed that manipulating the activity of olfactory receptor neurons in mice affected the development of glioma. The volume of glioma significantly reduced when the neurons' activity was inhibited, while the opposite was true when the neurons' activity was activated.
The findings are expected to help better understand the genesis of glioma and provide new ideas for the prevention, early intervention and treatment of the cancer, said the team leader Liu Chong. ■
