Differences of saliva composition in relation to tooth decay and gender
Abstract
Most people worldwide suffer from dental caries. Only a small part of the population is caries-resistant and the reason for this resistance in unknown. Only a few studies compared the saliva protein composition of people with carious teeth and people with no caries. Our study for the first time joins proteomic analysis of caries etiology in relation to gender. In this study, we compared the differences in the abundances of proteins in saliva between caries-resistant and caries-susceptible females and males by nano-liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (Label-Free Quantitative Proteomics). Our results demonstrate that the observed differences in the protein levels might have an influence on anti-caries resistance. A total of 19 potential markers of tooth caries were found, for example proteins S100A8, Annexin I with higher expression in the caries-susceptible group in comparison with the caries-free group and mucin-5B, lactoferrin, lysozyme C in the caries-free group in comparison with the caries-susceptible group. The presented study is the first complex proteomic and gender project where the saliva protein content of caries-free and caries-susceptible people were compared by label-free MS. Newly detected potential protein markers of dental caries can be a good basis for further research and for possible future therapeutic use.