Salivary biomarkers and its implication in tobacco users-A narrative review

Abstract

Tobacco has been associated with diverse diseases on the mouth, oral potentially malignant disorders, oral cancer and systemic diseases/cancer. The prevalence of oral cancer is high with tobacco users. The local and systemic physiology is altered by tobacco-related chemicals/metabolites. These may reflect as biomarkers of tobacco use, and they also influence the level of different biomarkers. Saliva being the initial body fluid influenced by the presence of these biomarkers and possess additional advantage to monitor, diagnose or prevent tobacco-associated illness by assessing the same. This narrative review aims to emphasize the different salivary biomarker studies and their inference on tobacco users. Articles have been collected from a different search engine, and the results were assessed to highlight their importance on human health. These markers can be further validated as diagnosing and/or predicting markers in high-risk tobacco users. In addition, the recognized readily available non-invasive salivary markers would be a great source for patient education and promoting health awareness in such groups.