Salivary pH as a marker of plasma adiponectin concentrations in Women

Unstimulated saliva collection was performed in 151 Caucasian women of French-Canadian origin (53 premenopausal women (PMW) and 98 menopausal women (MW)). Student's t test, ANOVA and linear regression models were used to assess the association between plasma adiponectin concentrations and salivary pH.Plasma adiponectin levels increased as a function of salivary pH in the whole sample and among MW (r = 0.29 and r = 0.36, p < 0.001). The proportion of the variance of plasma adiponectin levels explained by the salivary pH (R2) was 10.8% (p < 0.001). Plasma adiponectin levels progressively increased across salivary pH quartiles (p = 0.005).These results suggest that salivary pH is a significant correlate of plasma adiponectin levels in women. With the increasing prevalence of type 2 diabetes and obesity, new technologies should be developed to more easily monitor health status, disease onset and progression. Salivary pH, a simple, inexpensive and non-invasive measure, could be a very promising avenue.According to the World Health Organization, by 2015 approximately 2.3 billion adults worldwide will be overweight and more than 700 million obese [1]. The burden of the associated cardiometabolic risk components, such as type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), dyslipidemia and cardiovascular disease (CVD), is also set to grow rapidly. Not only is this epidemic progression observed in developed countries, but it increasingly affects developing countries too. Moreover, it has been estimated that by 2025, three out of four people with T2DM or other cardiometabolic risk components will be living in third world countries [2]. It is therefore mandatory to develop improved and more accessible screening tools in order to devise finer preventive and therapeutic strategies.Adiponectin has been identified as a new biochemical marker of visceral fat accumulation and could represent a critical link between obesity and the cardiometabolic risk profile [3]. Adiponectin is an adipocyte-derived pr