Salivary diagnostic biomarker for periodontal disease - A review

Abstract

Periodontitis is chronic inflammation of the periodontium caused by persistent bacterial infection affecting the connective tissue attachment and supporting bone around the teeth. As the ability to reconstruct the periodontium is limited after alveolar bone loss, early diagnosis and intervention should be paramount goals of periodontal treatment preventing future disease’s progression. Saliva is a physiologic fluid that contains complex mixture of substances as well as inflammatory biomarkers associated with periodontitis. Conventional clinical criteria are often insufficient for determining sites of active disease, for monitoring the response to therapy, or for measuring the degree of susceptibility to future disease progression. Therefore, the use of saliva has provided a substantial addition to the diagnostic armamentarium as an investigative tool for disease processes. With the current technological advances, together with point-of-care detection systems, salivary analysis will be valued much more highly in the near future. Even though saliva is easy to manipulate with low-cost storage, careful attention must be directed to limit variation in specimen integrity. This review focuses on the biomarkers in saliva that appears to be promising in the future for periodontal diagnosis, as well as some contemporary diagnostic tests available.