Saliva:Composition, Functioning and its Diagnostic Implications - A Review

Abstract

Saliva is considered to be as a profound biological fluid that is a collection of lot of components and they have their own features. It contributes in good oral health and helps in maintaining and assisting the oral environment. In addition, there are many advantages to employing saliva as a substrate for diagnostic analysis as its component levels are severely affected in case of oral and systemic diseases such as xerostomia, salivary gland disorders, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, radiotherapy, chemotherapy etc. Also, the ease of the sample collection provides the distinctive advantages such as the patient compliance, non-invasiveness, easy storage, repeated collection etc. Several advances have been introduced in the past years for the sensitive detection and quantification of a varied biomarkers that are identified in saliva reflecting the human system, using different methods including Mass Spectrometry (MS), Reverse Transcription-Polymerase Chain Reaction (RTPCR), microarrays, Enzyme Linked Immuno-Assay (ELISA) etc. In future researches, gap is subsequently closing between the use of salivary fluids and the other biofluids in the diagnostic applications. The salivary samples are found to be much reliable in diagnosis when compared to serum sample. This article recollects the overview about the multipurpose body fluid in relation to its clinical significance.