Scientists Use Saliva's 'Diagnostic Alphabets' to Diagnose Disease
Today, during the 85th General Session of the International Association for Dental Research, scientists are reporting that the use of saliva for clinical detection of major human diseases is only a few years away. Intense research is ongoing to discover diagnostic saliva biomarkers. A necessary prerequisite is to know, in a comprehensive manner, the informative biomarkers in saliva: the diagnostic alphabets. Like languages, which are synthesized from a foundation of alphabets, there are multiple diagnostic languages and thus diagnostic alphabets in saliva. The salivary proteome and the salivary transcriptome are two diagnostic alphabets that are ready for translational and clinical applications.