Ketone compound smelling ability: study in Hungarian twins.

On the basis of their earlier experiments the authors assumed that the ability to recognize the smell of two ketone compounds, acetone and methylethylketone (MEK), might be determined genetically. In the present work of smelling test was performed in adult Hungarian twins, 61 like sexed DZ pairs and 87 MZ pairs. No connection was found between twin zygosity and intra-pair concordance for MEK, while in the case of acetone smelling some connection may exist. A highly significant correlation was found between the smelling ability to acetone and MEK. Females seemed to be better smellers than males. Comparing the taste perception for PTC to the smell perception for acetone the supposition of a possible genetic linkage between the two traits, put forward by other authors, could not definitely be confirmed.