Related Experiment Video
Updated: Nov 5, 2025

Oral Biofilm Sampling for Microbiome Analysis in Healthy Children
Published on: December 31, 2017
Comparing periodontitis biomarkers in saliva, oral rinse and gingival crevicular fluid: A pilot study
Panagiota Katsiki1, Kamran Nazmi2, Bruno G Loos1
1Department of Periodontology, Academic Centre for Dentistry Amsterdam (ACTA), University of Amsterdam and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Aim:
To explore the feasibility of screening for periodontitis by measuring biomarkers, namely total proteolytic activity (TPA), matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-8, chitinase, lysozyme or their combination, in saliva, oral rinse and gingival crevicular fluid (GCF).
Material And Methods:
Subjects were recruited among healthy/gingivitis individuals and untreated periodontitis patients in Academic Centre for Dentistry Amsterdam (ACTA). All participants donated samples of unstimulated whole saliva, oral rinse and GCF. The protein concentrations and MMP-8 levels were determined by ELISA. Enzymatic activities were measured using appropriate fluorogenic substrates.
Results:
In oral rinse samples, periodontitis patients (n = 19) exhibited significantly higher concentrations of MMP-8 and TPA than controls (n = 20). MMP-8 in combination with chitinase explained 88% of the variance and assigned a subject to control or periodontitis group, with best accuracy (87.2%) in oral rinse.
Conclusions:
The combination of MMP-8 and chitinase in the current oral rinse procedure has the potential to discriminate periodontitis from periodontal health/gingivitis.

