Nausea and radiation-induced taste aversions in cancer patients.
The development of taste aversions was studied in 34 oncology patients undergoing radiotherapy. A target flavor was paired with irradiation on four consecutive treatment days. Self-reported nausea on treatment days reliably predicted aversion learning. The implications of this finding for the anorexia of cancer patients and the role of nausea in human taste aversion learning are discussed.