The diagnostic role of saliva: a review

As a diagnostic fluid, saliva offers distinctive advantages over serum because it can be collected non-invasively by individuals, even by patient. Does not require special equipment for collection and storage as unlike blood saliva does not clot. Advantageous for person in whom blood drawing is difficult as in obese and haemophilic patient. Whole saliva used for diagnosis of systemic diseases, because it contains serum constituents. These constituents are derived from the local vasculature of the salivary glands and gingival cervicular fluid.This review examines the diagnostic application of saliva for hereditary disorders, autoimmune diseases, malignant and infectious diseases, and endocrine disorders, as well as in the assessment of therapeutic levels of drugs and the monitoring of illicit drug use, and also for forensic evidence and others. . In future we are likely to see the increased utilization of saliva as a diagnostic fluid. As we enter the era of genomic medicine, sialochemistry will play an increasingly important role in the early detection, the monitoring and progression of the systemic and oral diseases

Oral manifestations in growth hormone disorders

Growth hormone is of vital importance for normal growth and development. Individuals with growth hormone deficiency develop pituitary dwarfism with disproportionate delayed growth of skull and facial skeleton giving them a small facial appearance for their age. Both hyper and hypopituitarism have a marked effect on development of oro-facial structures including eruption and shedding patterns of teeth, thus giving an opportunity to treating dental professionals to first see the signs and symptoms of these growth disorders and correctly diagnose the serious underlying disease

Transcriptomic profile of adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes after neonatal encephalopathy

A rapid and early diagnostic test to identify the encephalopathic babies at risk of adverse outcome may accelerate the development of neuroprotectants. We examined if a whole blood transcriptomic signature measured soon after birth, predicts adverse neurodevelopmental outcome eighteen months after neonatal encephalopathy. We performed next generation sequencing on whole blood ribonucleic acid obtained within six hours of birth from the first 47 encephalopathic babies recruited to the Hypothermia for Encephalopathy in Low and middle-income countries (HELIX) trial. Two infants with blood culture positive sepsis were excluded, and the data from remaining 45 were analysed. A total of 855 genes were significantly differentially expressed between the good and adverse outcome groups, of which RGS1 and SMC4 were the most significant. Biological pathway analysis adjusted for gender, trial randomisation allocation (cooling therapy versus usual care) and estimated blood leukocyte proportions revealed over-representation of genes from pathways related to melatonin and polo-like kinase in babies with adverse outcome. These preliminary data suggest that transcriptomic profiling may be a promising tool for rapid risk stratification in neonatal encephalopathy. It may provide insights into biological mechanisms and identify novel therapeutic targets for neuroprotection

Hypothermia for moderate or severe neonatal encephalopathy in low-income and middle-income countries (HELIX): a randomised controlled trial in India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh

Copyright (c) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an Open Access article under the CC BY 4.0 license