The Multiple Benefits of Saliva for Humans
Besides the more commonly known benefits of minimizing halitosis, keeping the mouth moist and comfortable,, making food taste better and easier to swallow, there are also a number of other lesser-known but still highly important benefits of saliva for humans as well. These benefits include most especially the ability of scientists to use human saliva to assess individual health status and to identify potential and existing disorders in ways that facilitate efficacious treatments. Given the need for this type of accurate and rapid immunoassay techniques have assumed new importance and relevance today. The purpose of this paper is to provide a review of a selected article by Maniga and Golinsky (2001) concerning the benefits of using saliva for health status analyses, followed by a critique of the study’s format. Finally, a summary of the research and key findings concerning the benefits of saliva for humans are presented in the conclusion.

Summary and Critique

Summary

In their study, “Remarkable insights into health and disease are offered through analysis of saliva” (copy attached), Maniga and Golinsky (2001) provide a brief background of their research concerning the use of saliva by laboratories and medical researchers for evaluating future risk, diagnosing and actually preventing a number of medical disorders and diseases.

In this regard, Maniga and Golinsky (2001) advise that, “Physicians experienced in saliva analysis are able to predict, diagnose or prevent many health problems and diseases” (p. 37). The superiority of saliva for these types of applications compared to using blood is due to its specific cellular proprieties. For example, Maniga and Golinsky (2001) point out that, “Unlike blood testing, saliva analysis is looking at the cellular level (the biologically active compounds) and saliva is therefore truly representative of what is clinically relevant -- the...…an effective approach to presenting the background of their research and the findings that emerged from their analysis of trends in saliva testing technologies.

Conclusion

Although Franklin D. Roosevelt’s vice presidency famously suggested the office was not worth a warm bucket of spit, the value of human saliva has become increasingly recognized over the past half century. The main points that were made by Maniga and Golinskey (2001) concerning the value of using saliva for diagnostic applications have assumed even more importance and relevance as researchers scramble for faster and cheaper ways to test people for the Covid-19 virus. In the final analysis, it is reasonable to conclude that saliva will become the testing substance of choice for a far wider range of disorders as these technologies continue to improve, reducing the time required to obtain results as well as the costs of testing while simultaneously improving their accuracy.