Salivary diagnostics

enhancing disease detection and making medicine better

Segal, Alik
Wong, Dr David T.

¹ University of California-Los Angeles, School of Dentistry and Dental Research Institute
² School of Engineering
³ Division of Head and Neck Surgery/Otolaryngology
⁴ Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center
⁵ Molecular Biology Institute, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Correspondence: David T. Wong, DMD, DMSc UCLA School of Dentistry and Dental Research Institute, 73–017 CHS 10833 Le Conte Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90095 USA. Tel: (310) 206 3048; Fax: (310) 825 7609; e-mail: [email protected]

Accepted: 4 October 2007

European Journal of Dental Education 12:p 22-29, February 2008.

To monitor health status, disease onset and progression, and treatment outcome non-invasively is a most desirable goal in the health care delivery and health research. There are three prerequisites necessary to reach this goal:

A non-invasive method for collecting biological samples.
Specific biomarkers associated with health or disease.
A technology platform to rapidly discriminate the biomarkers.

An initiative catalysed by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) has created a roadmap to achieve this goal through the use of oral fluids as the diagnostic medium to scrutinize the health and disease status. This is an ideal opportunity to bridge state-of-the-art saliva-based biosensors and disease-discriminatory salivary biomarkers in diagnostic applications. Oral fluid, often called the ‘mirror of the body’, is a perfect medium to be explored for health and disease surveillance. The translational applications and opportunities are enormous. This review presents the translational value of saliva as a credible clinical diagnostic fluid and the scientific rationale for such use.