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Salivary Diagnostics in Pediatrics: Applicability, Translatability, and Limitations
Mona Hassaneen1, Jill L Maron1,2
1Mother Infant Research Institute at Tufts Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA.
Insights
Salivary diagnostic platforms offer non-invasive health monitoring for children. This review explores pediatric "omic" applications, highlighting challenges and the need for large trials to establish normative biomarker values for accurate disease diagnosis.
Area of Science:
- Pediatric diagnostics
- Salivary biomarkers
- Omics technologies
Background:
- Technological advances have enabled salivary diagnostic platforms for health monitoring.
- Current salivary assays primarily target adult diseases, neglecting pediatric populations.
- Saliva analysis offers a non-invasive approach to assess oral and systemic health in children.
Purpose of the Study:
- To review novel applications of salivary diagnostics in pediatrics across the "omic" spectrum.
- To discuss challenges in implementing pediatric salivary platforms.
- To emphasize the need for large-scale trials to establish normative pediatric salivary biomarker values.
Main Methods:
- Review of current literature on salivary diagnostics in pediatrics.
- Exploration of "omic" approaches including genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, microbiomics, and metabolomics.
- Analysis of factors affecting salivary components in children, such as age, diet, and development.
Main Results:
- "Omic" analyses of saliva hold significant potential for improving pediatric care and health access.
- Novel applications exist across genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, microbiomic, and metabolomic levels.
- Challenges include age-related variations, dietary influences, and developmental changes in salivary composition.
Conclusions:
- Salivary diagnostics can significantly improve pediatric health monitoring and disease detection.
- Overcoming implementation challenges requires further research and standardization.
- Large-scale, multicenter trials are essential to establish normative pediatric biomarker values for clinical translation.
Abstract:
In the last decade, technological advances, combined with an improved appreciation of the ability of saliva to inform caregivers about both oral health and systemic disease, have led to the emergence of salivary diagnostic platforms. However, the majority of these assays have targeted diseases that more commonly affect the adult population, largely neglecting infants and children who arguably could benefit the most from non-invasive assessment tools for health monitoring. Gaining access into development, infection, and disease through comprehensive "omic" analyses of saliva could significantly improve care and enhance health access. In this review, we will highlight novel applications of salivary diagnostics in pediatrics across the "omic" spectrum, including at the genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, microbiomic, and metabolomic level. The challenges to implementing salivary platforms into care, including the effects of age, diet, and developmental stage on salivary components, will be reviewed. Ultimately, large-scale, multicenter trials must be performed to establish normative biomarker values across the age spectrum to accurately discriminate between health and disease. Only then can salivary diagnostics truly translate into pediatric care.
