2023 · Biomedical materials & devices · open access
A Review on Saliva-Based Health Diagnostics: Biomarker Selection and Future Directions
Kumari et al.
The finding, in our words
Saliva offers a non-invasive specimen matrix for detecting both oral and systemic conditions at the point of care. Although home collection and diagnostic biosensors show strong clinical and economic utility, technical challenges remain in standardisation and device integration before widespread point-of-care adoption.
A paraphrase to the Library’s standard, never the abstract. The source is one link away and is always the authority.
In 104 healthy adults who collected both 24-hour urine and saliva at home, salivary iodine concentration measured at specific post-meal intervals showed excellent correlation with urinary iodine excretion. This suggests timed saliva microsampling could replace cumbersome urine collection as a reliable biomarker for assessing iodine intake in decentralised diagnostics.
This review found saliva comparable to blood and urine for detecting viral genetic material and antibodies, supporting patient-centric monitoring and decentralised surveillance. The authors state that standardised protocols and further validation are required for routine clinical use.
The study developed a curcumin-embedded paper sensor for bilirubin detection in saliva, coupled with an IoT-enabled hand-held reader. Clinical testing in 18 jaundiced infants demonstrated good correlation with reference methods for both salivary and blood bilirubin, indicating utility for decentralised neonatal jaundice monitoring.
A graphene lab-on-a-chip device achieved high accuracy and precision for multiplex renal biomarker testing in serum and saliva, with sensitivities ranging from 89.0 to 99.7 per cent. Untrained volunteers produced results comparable to trained chemists, suggesting the device is suitable for patient-centric at-home diagnostics and could improve access to chronic kidney disease monitoring.
Profiling EBV DNA methylation in self-collected saliva distinguished nasopharyngeal carcinoma from controls with 90% sensitivity and 100% specificity by capture sequencing; a q-PCR assay targeting one CpG site achieved 78% sensitivity and 100% specificity. The methylation density fell after therapy and rose with recurrence, confirming that decentralised salivary screening can support both diagnosis and disease monitoring.