The Use of Saliva in the Diagnosis of Oral and Systemic Diseases
1Medical University of Białystok, Białystok, Poland
2Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain
The Use of Saliva in the Diagnosis of Oral and Systemic Diseases
Description
Saliva produced by the salivary glands plays the most important role in oral homeostasis, including cleaning and moisturizing both mucous membrane and teeth, facilitating articulation and swallowing, and protecting teeth from decay. Moreover, saliva participates in both specific and nonspecific immune defense and shows very effective antioxidative system that constitutes the first line of defense of the gastrointestinal tract against ROS. As a result of rapid development salivaomics, saliva is also recognized as a pool of biological markers. Whole saliva is a good noninvasive diagnostic material that could be a substitute for blood in the monitoring, prognosis, and treatment of many general diseases. Interest in saliva is not surprising because saliva contains a wide range of ingredients that reflect the level of biomarkers in real time as well as the composition of the plasma. What is more, saliva biomarkers cover changes in the biochemical indicators of RNA, DNA, and proteins to changes in the composition of microbiota.
As we enter the era of genomic medicine, we think that sialochemistry will replace the biochemical analysis of blood in everyday medical clinical practice. Saliva offers many advantages: easy and noninvasive collection, with no risk of needle stick injuries, and a good cooperation with the patients. Moreover, saliva collection may provide a cost-effective approach for the screening of large population and eliminate the risk of contracting infectious diseases for the doctor and the patients. This special issue is dedicated to studies about easily accessible markers in the diagnosis, monitoring, and progression of the systemic diseases.
Hence, we shall invite researchers, not only dentists but also scientists and general doctors, who are looking for easily accessible markers in the diagnosis, monitoring, and progression of the systemic diseases. We are interested in original papers concerning the practical application of saliva and its biomarkers in the diagnosis of general diseases. We especially welcome submissions related to the discovery of salivary markers of general diseases, based on experiments performed on animals and humans. We encourage investigators to submit review papers describing the current state of the knowledge about the use of saliva in the diagnosis and monitoring of systemic diseases.
Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:
- Salivary markers of systemic and oral diseases
- The usefulness of saliva as a diagnostic material in the diagnosis and monitoring of the effects of treatment of general and oral diseases
- The relationship between oral inflammatory infections and general diseases
- Effect of general diseases on increasing risk and complications of oral and periodontal diseases
- Salivaomics
- The relationship between the salivary gland function and the composition of saliva
- Animal saliva research