CLINICAL UTILITY OF TESTS, MARKERS AND PROTEOMICS IN SALIVARY FUNCTIONAL EXPLORATION

Abstract

Saliva is a very attractive biological fluid in terms of the diagnosis of numerous conditions for several reasons: saliva collection is usually economical, safe, easy and can be performed without the help of medical personnel (it allows sampling at home); it is considered a non-invasive process by patients because it does not cause any pain and can be easily collected for patients in the pediatric age range. Recent proteomic platforms have analyzed the human salivary proteome, which characterizes approximately 3000 differentially expressed proteins and peptides, many of them of microbiological origin. A careful evaluation of this huge amount of data achievable to date will allow, in the near future, the personalization of therapeutic interventions by evaluating thousands of parameters. Today, proteomic technologies are extremely complex, expensive and of limited accessibility.

Keywords

• saliva
• proteomics
• salivary tests