Salivary biomarkers: novel noninvasive tools to diagnose chronic inflammation / 国际口腔科学杂志·英文版

Several chronic disorders including type 2 diabetes (T2D), obesity, heart disease and cancer are preceded by a state of chronic low-grade inflammation. Biomarkers for the early assessment of chronic disorders encompass acute phase proteins (APP), cytokines and chemokines, pro-inflammatory enzymes, lipids and oxidative stress mediators. These substances enter saliva through the blood flow and, in some cases, there is a close relation between their salivary and serum concentration. Saliva can be easily collected and stored with non-invasive and cost-saving procedures, and it is emerging the concept to use it for the detection of inflammatory biomarkers. To this purpose, the present review aims to discuss the advantages and challenges of using standard and cutting-edge techniques to discover salivary biomarkers which may be used in diagnosis/therapy of several chronic diseases with inflammatory consequences with the pursuit to possibly replace conventional paths with detectable soluble mediators in saliva. Specifically, the review describes the procedures used for saliva collection, the standard approaches for the measurement of salivary biomarkers and the novel methodological strategies such as biosensors to improve the quality of care for chronically affected patients.

In silico investigation of possible caffeine interactions with common inflammation-related targets

Caffeine (CA) is a methylxanthine alkaloid widely used in anti-inflammatory drug associations due to itsvasoconstricting properties. Although CA is acknowledged to interact with a plethora of macromolecules inhuman organism, there was to the best of our knowledge, no survey regarding its possible interactions withcommon inflammation-related targets. Henceforth, this work was concerned in the investigation of CA possibleinteractions with cyclooxygenases-1 and -2 (COX-1 and COX-2), as well as prostaglandin H2 synthase-1and leukotriene A4 hydrolase through in silico approaches. CA molecule was studied as a ligand whereas theligand-macromolecules docking models were created through AutoDock Vina tools. Results showcased that,although the thermodynamic features of the best scoring models did not render enough information to affirmstable interaction between CA and the analyzed macromolecules, more studies are needed to shed light on thepossible role of methylxanthines towards inflammation targets.