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Salivary biomarkers in Alzheimer’s disease

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Abstract

Objectives

The objective of this study was to evaluate the changes that can occur in saliva components in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) of different severity and determine if any of these components could be a biomarker of this disease. Therefore, a panel of selected analytes related to the amyloid cascade, the immune and adrenergic systems, among others, were analyzed in the saliva of patients with Alzheimer’s disease.

Methods

A total of 152 patients with AD and controls were included. The severity of the disease was established according to the Global Deterioration Scale. Unstimulated whole saliva was collected.

Results

Salivary amyloid-β42 was significantly lower, and complement C4 was significantly higher in the patients with AD than in the controls (p < 0.05 in both cases). Only complement C4 maintained its significant effect in the multivariate regression analysis. However, the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of C4 was 0.613. No changes were found in any analyte regarding the severity of the disease.

Conclusions

A decrease in amyloid-β42 and an increase in complement C4 were detected in the saliva of patients with AD, but the changes did not show a high diagnostic performance for the detection of AD and were not associated with its severity.

Clinical relevance

Although some analytes showed significant differences in saliva in patients with AD, in our study conditions the salivary biomarkers analyzed were not of enough diagnostic utility for being used in routine.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge all participants of the study. Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of Spain supported AT through a postdoctoral program “Ramon y Cajal” (RYC-2017-22992). This research was funded by the Seneca foundation of Murcia Regional Government (Spain), grantnumber 19894/GERM/15.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Interdisciplinary Laboratory of Clinical Analysis, Interlab-UMU, Regional Campus of International Excellence ‘Campus Mare Nostrum’, University of Murcia, Espinardo, 30100, Murcia, Spain

    Asta Tvarijonaviciute, Jose J. Ceron, Luis Pardo-Marin & Sandra Valverde

  2. Department of Oral Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Regional Campus of International Excellence ‘Campus Mare Nostrum’, University of Murcia, Espinardo, 30100, Murcia, Spain

    Carmen Zamora & Pia Lopez-Jornet

  3. Estadistica Murcia, 30565, Las Torres de Cotillas, Murcia, Spain

    Antonio F. Bravo-Cantero

Authors
  1. Asta Tvarijonaviciute
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  2. Carmen Zamora
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  7. Pia Lopez-Jornet
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Contributions

Conceptualization, PLJ, JJC, and AT; methodology, PLJ, AT, and CZ; formal analysis, CZ, AT, SMS, and LPM; investigation, PLJ, CZ, AT, SMS, LPM, and JJC; resources, PLJ and JJC; data curation, AT and AFBC; writing–original draft preparation, CZ, PLJ, AT; writing–review and editing, PLJ, AT, JJC, SMS; supervision, PLJ and AT; funding acquisition, PLJ and JJC.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Asta Tvarijonaviciute.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study and/or their relatives or legal representatives.

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Tvarijonaviciute, A., Zamora, C., Ceron, J.J. et al. Salivary biomarkers in Alzheimer’s disease. Clin Oral Invest 24, 3437–3444 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00784-020-03214-7

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