Saliva: A mirror to health

Salivary composition enables it to fulfill multiple tasks, which is based both on components that originate in the oral, oropharyngeal mucosa and as secretions from the salivary glands themselves, as well as serum derivatives. Accordingly, salivary analysis facilitates the evaluation of both local and systemic changes in the body. Salivary analysis may also be used in order to examine specific disease-related alterations such as epithelial tumor markers, which is shown to be significantly increased in the saliva of oral squamous cell carcinoma. Similarly, patient’s salivary components are representative of its composition under physiological or pathological conditions, and these components that may be altered in several oral and systemic conditions, aid in the further understanding of the relationship between saliva and the disease pathogenesis, as well as its contribution to its diagnosis

Lactate dehydrogenase: An enzymatic biomarker in oral health and disease

Lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), a metabolic enzyme catalyzing the anerobic glycolysis has been a non-specific indicator of diseases such as myocardial infarction, liver disease (being particularly high in toxic hepatitis with jaundice), megaloblastic anemia’s, and renal disease. LDH is an intracellular enzyme detectable in the cellular cytoplasm of all the cells in the human body, which becomes extracellular upon the cell death. Therefore, its extracellular presence is related to the cell death and tissue destruction. The LDH concentration in saliva, as an expression of cellular necrosis, could be a more specific indicator of the oral lesions that affect the integrity of the oral mucosa. This article thus reviews LDH as an enzyme marker of oral health and disease with a note on its isolation and storag