Salivary Urea: A Marker for Chronic Renal Disease

Abstract

Background: Salivary urea, correlates well with serum urea, can be utilized as a low-cost, easily accessible and noninvasive diagnostic tool for screening patients in early stages of kidney disease, especially for developing countries with limited resources. Saliva for diagnostic purpose, is inexpensive, non-invasive, easy to collect, use, store and transport, contain high amount of disease biomarkers and shows efficient and reliable results. Objective: To asses and prove the salivary diagnostics as reliable alternate to serum in renal diseases. Methods: A cross-sectional validation study of 1 year duration from June 2012 to June 2013 was conducted. Non-probability consecutive sampling technique was employed on the patients attending the Nephrology OPD or those who were admitted to Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre Karachi. Results: Significant correlation (.00) was found between the levels of serum and salivary urea and creatinine. A slight increase in the level of serum urea and creatinine results in a significant increase in the level of salivary urea and creatinine. Almost 63.2% and 64.6% of changes in serum urea and creatinine can be explained by the changes in salivary urea and creatinine levels respectively. Conclusion: Saliva can be developed as a diagnostic fluid that is an alternative to blood. It is non invasive, less expensive and collection procedure does not require technicians. The use of salivary assay for diagnostics of chronic renal failure (urea and creatinine) can be established as a cost effective test for developing countries. Key Words: Saliva, Tool, Renal Failure, Oral Pathology.