Premium
Salivary DNA Methylation Profiling: Aspects to Consider for Biomarker Identification
Author(s) -
Langie Sabine A. S.,
Moisse Matthieu,
Declerck Ken,
Koppen Gudrun,
Godderis Lode,
Vanden Berghe Wim,
Drury Stacy,
De Boever Patrick
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
basic and clinical pharmacology and toxicology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.805
H-Index - 90
eISSN - 1742-7843
pISSN - 1742-7835
DOI - 10.1111/bcpt.12721
Subject(s) - saliva , epigenetics , biomarker , dna methylation , profiling (computer programming) , medicine , comparability , bioinformatics , biology , genetics , computer science , gene expression , mathematics , combinatorics , gene , operating system
Is it not more comfortable to spit saliva in a tube than to be pricked with a needle to draw blood to analyse your health and disease risk? Many patients, study participants and (parents of) young children undoubtedly prefer non‐invasive and convenient procedures. Such procedures increase compliance rates especially for longitudinal prospective studies. Saliva is an attractive biofluid providing good quality DNA to study epigenetic mechanisms underlying disease across development. In this MiniReview, we will describe the different applications of saliva in the field of epigenetics, focusing on genomewide methylation analysis. Advantages of the use of saliva and its comparability with blood will be discussed, as will the challenges in data processing and interpretation. Knowledge gaps will be identified and suggestions given on how to improve the analysis, making saliva ‘the’ biofluid of choice for future biomarker initiatives in many different epidemiological and public health studies.