Salivary protein profiling in type 1 diabetes using proteomic tools

Saliva is a biological fluid of great potential in clinical medicine due to the opportunity of non-invasive, stress-free, simple and safe collection. Diabetes mellitus was shown to lead to marked dysfunction of the secretory capacity of the salivary glands and then may be responsible for the increased susceptibility to oral infection. Objective: The goal of this study was to investigate the modification of the salivary proteome occurring in type 1-diabetes in order to highlight potential biomarkers of the pathology. Methods: For this purpose, we combined high resolution 2D gel electrophoresis for protein separation, powerful image analysis to compare patterns between subjects and MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry for protein identification Results: The proteomic comparison of saliva samples from healthy subjects and bad controlled type 1 diabetes patients revealed a modulation of 23 proteins. 14 isoforms of alpha amylase, 1 prolactin inducible protein, 3 isoforms of salivary acidic protein-1 and 3 isoforms of salivary cystatins SA-1 were detected as under expressed, whereas 2 isoforms of serotransferrin were over expressed in the pathological condition Conclusion: According to available data concerning the role of these under expressed proteins in anti-inflammatory processes, this situation is proposed to reveal for the first time, a diminution of the non-immunological defense of the oral cavity.