In periodontics and implant dentistry, traditional clinical criteria are often insufficient for determining sites of active disease, for monitoring quantitatively the response to therapy or for measuring the degree of susceptibility to future disease progression. Saliva as a mirror of oral and systemic health is a valuable source for clinically relevant information because it contains biomarkers specific for the unique physiological aspects of periodontal/peri-implant disease, and qualitative changes in the composition of these biomarkers could have diagnostic value by identifying patients with enhanced disease susceptibility, identifying sites with active disease, predicting sites that will have active disease in the future and/or serving as surrogate end points for monitoring the effectiveness of therapy.
展开▼
