Compliance with Saliva Collection Protocol in Healthy Volunteers: Strategies for Managing Risk and Errors

Abstract

Salivary bioscience technologies such as electrophoresis are widely applied for diagnosing systemic health status. Diagnosis using a saliva sample has emerged as a preferred technique since the sample is easy to collect and the method is inexpensive and non-invasive. Salivary diagnostics have even been identified as potential substitutes for serum protein biomarkers. However, the optimal protocol for collecting saliva has not yet been established. In many scientific settings, such as randomized controlled trials, sampling and statistical errors often occur when handling samples from healthy volunteers. These errors can be due to the psychological behavior of the volunteers, subject nonadherence, questionnaire characteristics, collection methods, and/or sample processing. The purpose of the review presented here is to outline the strategies for managing the risk factors and to minimize the sampling errors during saliva collection in healthy volunteers.

Keywords: Saliva collection; healthy volunteers; psychological stress; risk management; salivary proteomics; sampling errors.

Figure 1

Four stages of saliva collection from healthy volunteers

Figure 2

Specimen collection (saliva) process to minimize inter-individual variability