The validity, stability, and utility of measuring uric acid in saliva.

Author: Riis JL, et al. (2018), Biomarkers in Medicine

SUMMARY:

• Uric acid (UA) is associated with cardiovascular and metabolic disorders, as well as a wide range of other health
  conditions and behaviors.
• A noninvasive measure of UA would be particularly useful in biobehavioral health and clinical research.
• Using salivary and serum UA data from healthy young adults, we examined the validity and stability of salivary
• UA and its utility as a noninvasive measure of circulating UA.
• We found a strong positive association between salivary and serum UA, and, importantly, neither the direction nor the magnitude of this association was related to total protein in saliva, blood leakage into oral fluid, proinflammatory cytokines, or biobehavioral indices of poor oral health.
• Results also revealed robust inverse associations between UA and adiponectin in both serum and saliva.
• Salivary UA levels were highly correlated within and between assessment points, and advanced statistical modeling showed the majority (62–66%) of the variance in salivary UA could be attributed to a latent trait component suggesting relative stability in salivary UA levels.
• BMI and sex were associated with the stable trait-like component of salivary UA.
• The findings demonstrate strong measurement validity and stability when UA is measured in saliva, and provide evidence supporting salivary UA as a robust indicator of systemic UA activity. The finding suggests that salivary UA could serve as a biomarker for a wide range of potential conditions and disease states.

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Keywords: adiponectin, biomarker, body mass index, C-reactive protein, latent state-trait modeling, saliva, serum, uric acid