Do antihypertensive drugs simply taste bad?
Some antihypertensive drugs, when chewed or maintained in the oral cavity for long periods, produce extremely long-lasting taste (e.g. bitter) sensations [16]. This fact, along with evidence that the taste and smell systems respond to some blood-borne agents (a phenomenon variously termed ‘intravascular olfaction’ or ‘intravascular taste’), suggests that a number of the chemosensory side-effects of drugs could simply reflect the direct activation of sensory receptors [41]. The issue of intravascular stimulation is complex, however. In some cases, a blood-borne agent may simply diffuse from the blood into the lungs, and from there activate the receptors of the olfactory, and more rarely taste, systems in the normal manner [42]. However, in other cases the stimulus may activate the receptors by direct diffusion to them from the proximal blood supply, although evidence for this is limited. Several studies lend support to the hypothesis that a number of antihypertensive drugs stimulate che
