Salivary Diagnostics- Reloaded

As we approach the threshold of genomic medicine, the increasing use of salivary diagnostics will helpcatalyze a shift from disease diagnosis to health surveillance. With new techniques for detecting small quantities ofsalivary components, including proteins and messenger RNA (mRNA), the field of salivary diagnostics hasemerged as one of dentistry’s most promising areas of research. Because collecting saliva is noninvasive, it isbecoming the preferable way in bridging state-of-the-art saliva-based biosensors and disease-discriminatorysalivary biomarkers in diagnostic applications.The challenge to make salivary diagnostics a clinical reality is in establishing the scientific foundation and clinicalvalidations necessary to position it as a highly accurate and feasible technology, which can achieve definite pointof-care assessment of patient health and disease status.The field of salivary diagnostics is now becoming a broad,complex and crosscutting area of scientific research with enormous potential to impact the practicing dentist andhealth care in general.