Sammanfattning
Saliva is critical for maintenance of oral homeostasis, which is
why saliva has been widely focused upon within various aspects
of research. During past decades, much attention has been
paid to screening of saliva for the content of potential biomarkers
to identify and monitor the presence of various diseases.
As compared to blood and dental plaque sampling, saliva is
highly suitable for biomarker analysis, because saliva can be
easily and non-invasively collected. Moreover, the tremendous
technological development in molecular biological methods
that can be applied to saliva samples containing human cells,
bacteria, DNA, RNA and proteins, may lead to new ways to
reveal presence of oral and medical diseases. This development
has fuelled a comprehensive research activity on biomarkers
for identification of oral diseases such as periodontitis, dental
caries and oral cancer, but also medical diseases including
Sjogren’s syndrome.