2023 · International journal of cancer · paywalled
Saliva biopsy: Detecting the difference of EBV DNA methylation in the diagnosis of nasopharyngeal carcinoma
Zheng et al.
The finding, in our words
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.
A paraphrase to the Library’s standard, never the abstract. The source is one link away and is always the authority.
Self-collection of saliva and hair specimens from ethnically diverse breast cancer survivors proved feasible, with samples remaining stable during shipment and storage. Hair cortisol measured by ELISA showed acceptable variability (16% coefficient of variation), supporting decentralised capture of chronic stress biomarkers in oncology cohorts without clinic visits.
Salivary HPV DNA testing achieved 91.7% sensitivity and 100% specificity against oropharyngeal swab in patients with oral cavity cancer, demonstrating potential for non-invasive self-collection screening programmes and long-term monitoring of HPV-driven disease.
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.
A saliva-derived transcriptomic signature using support vector machine learning detected gastric cancer with an AUC of 0.87, sensitivity of 79% and specificity of 70%. Tissue-based gene expression models performed poorly when applied to saliva, indicating that saliva-specific biomarker panels are needed for effective non-invasive gastric cancer screening.
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.