Slanted Science

Saliva science. Not the hottest of research fields, perhaps, but it is apparently drawing in some funding.

Because a new paper published in the Journal of Proteome Research is reporting that the wet stuff changes its chemical composition as women age.

The work was conducted by a bunch of boffins at the Scripps Institute in California, under the leadership of John Yates, who we’re assuming is great value at a dinner party: “Well, basically, I spend hours each day carefully examining the molecular components of ladies’ mouthjuice. Saliva is something of a passion for me. Oh, you have to leave? That’s a shame, I was just about to describe the differences between 20- and 30-year old oral salt levels”.

Anyway, stop laughing because this is serious. Saliva contains proteins involved in various normal and pathological processes, including digestion, and immune disorders. The researchers envisage that saliva could provide a broad overview of a person’s general health, and even indicate the presence of certain diseases.

This could lead to the development of rapid diagnostic tests, which would be less invasive than drawing blood. To develop such tests we need to know how protein levels change in the spitwater of normal, disease-free women.

So, the eggheads used healthy volunteers of varying ages and looked at protein expression. They found 293 proteins whose levels changed with age, and noted that most of these were immune system-related. As they say:

It is critical to take into consideration these normal differences in protein expression when searching for clinically relevant, disease specific biomarkers.

Don’t Hold Your Breath, But This May Lead To: we can really see a market for this information. Millions of people use dating websites. Many of them are a little economical with the truth when it comes to their age. In the future, any questions from suspicious dates will be dismissed – one way or the other – by recourse to the quick and simple “Saliva Satisfaction” age testing kit. We have it trademarked. One day, billions shall be ours.