Saliva testing--a nontraditional diagnostic tool.

S M Miller

PubMed · 10172036

Saliva testing--a nontraditional diagnostic tool.

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To demonstrate the advantages of saliva testing over more common methods of determining concentrations of hormones, drugs, and viral antibodies in blood. DATA SOURCES: Recent professional journals, product literature, bibliographies, and conference proceedings. STUDY SELECTION: Not applicable. DATA EXTRACTION: Survey of literature. DATA SYNTHESIS: In the past 10 years, saliva has been used increasingly to determine concentrations of steroid hormones, HIV antibodies, drugs of abuse, and therapeutic drugs in blood. Benefits of using saliva rather than blood or urine for diagnostic testing include convenience and economy of specimen collection, ease of multiple sampling, and low risk of exposing laboratorians to hazardous samples. CONCLUSION: Saliva testing is possible with currently available laboratory technologies. If benefits of saliva testing are to be fully realized, laboratorians must provide physicians with data showing correlations of analyte concentrations in saliva, blood, and urine.

Explore related subjects

Clinical Laboratory Techniques Humans Saliva Specimen Handling Substance Abuse Detection Journal Article Review

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeX RIS

S M Miller. Saliva testing--a nontraditional diagnostic tool.. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10172036/

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related citations

PubMed2003

Testing strategies in the initial management of patients with community-acquired pneumonia.

The initial management of patients suspected of having community-acquired pneumonia is challenging because of the broad range of clinical presentations, potential life-threatening nature of the illness, and associated high costs of care. The initial testing strategies should accurately establish a diagnosis and prognosis in order to determine the optimal treatment strategy. The diagnosis is important in determining the need for antibiotic therapy, and the prognosis is important in determining the site of care. This paper reviews the test characteristics of the history, physical examination, and laboratory findings, individually and in combination, in diagnosing community-acquired pneumonia and predicting short-term risk for death from the infection. In addition, we consider the implications of these test characteristics from the perspective of decision thresholds. The history and physical examination cannot provide a high level of certainty in the diagnosis of community-acquired pneumonia, but the absence of vital sign abnormalities substantially reduces the probability of the infection. Chest radiography is considered the gold standard for pneumonia diagnosis; however, we do not know its sensitivity and specificity, and we have limited data on the costs of false-positive and false-negative results. In the absence of empirical evidence, the decision to order a chest radiograph needs to rely on expert opinion in seeking strategies to optimize the balance between harms and benefits. Once community-acquired pneumonia is diagnosed, a combination of history, physical examination, and laboratory items can help estimate the short-term risk for death and, along with the patient's psychosocial characteristics, determine the appropriate site of treatment.

Clinical Laboratory Techniques↗

PubMed2003

Laboratory diagnosis.

Explore the source record for details and available documents.

Clinical Laboratory Techniques↗

PubMed2003

Specimen materials, target values and commutability for external quality assessment (proficiency testing) schemes.

BACKGROUND: The objective of external quality assessment is to evaluate clinical acceptability of laboratory results. It is desirable to evaluate intermethod harmonization and traceability to a reference system. METHODS: Conventional matrix-modified processed materials are used in most programs, because they can be produced in large quantities, can have multiple abnormal analytes in the same vial and have excellent stability. The principal limitation of these materials is non-commutability which makes them unsuitable for traceability or harmonization evaluation. Peer group evaluation is used which allows an individual laboratory to confirm appropriate use of a measurement technology and a manufacturer to monitor uniformity in their calibration transfer process. Authentic clinical specimen pools provide commutability but are limited by the quantity available and number of analytes at pathologic levels in the same vial. Hybrid approaches have used authentic clinical specimen pools in conjunction with non-commutable processed materials to determine method-specific matrix-corrected target values which have enabled evaluation of traceability to reference methods. CONCLUSIONS: Conventional processed materials are limited by non-commutability. Pooled clinical specimens are limited by availability. When used together, external quality assessment can evaluate traceability to reference systems and harmonization between test procedures.

Clinical Laboratory Techniques↗