Health

Protein in saliva may aid in the treatment of COVID-19


“Study author Erika Egal, DVM, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Patrice Mimche, PhD, in the department of pathology at the University of Utah Health in Salt Lake City.”

Egal will present her findings at the American Physiological Society Annual Meeting in Experimental Biology (EB) 2022 meeting, to be held in Philadelphia on April 2-5, 2022.


For this study, the researchers examined saliva samples collected from patients admitted to the Utah Hospital emergency room with respiratory symptoms. 67 patients tested positive for COVID-19 infection and 64 patients did not. They found that the presence of ephrin ligands in saliva was strongly associated with the diagnosis of acute COVID-19.

These findings may help elucidate the biological processes involved in severe responses to COVID-19 infection, the researchers say. Previous studies suggest that ephrins may play a role in injury and inflammation. More research is needed to determine if ephrin levels are linked to hospital admissions, serious illness or death, the scientists say. In addition, with the emergence of new viral variants, it is difficult to say whether existing COVID-19 tests can accurately diagnose infections associated with new variants. Eagle says that searching for ephrin in saliva could provide a simple, non-invasive way to provide conclusive evidence when there is a discrepancy between test results and the clinical picture.

Saliva contains a lot of information beyond detecting COVID-19 infection,“Mimche said.”We demonstrate that immune cells, cytokines and soluble proteins can be reliably measured from saliva samples. Our findings provide a starting point for investigations looking at causal pathways between infection and poor medical outcomes.

The study was overseen by Mimche in collaboration with Theodore Liou, MD, and My N. Helms, PhD, from the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Utah Health, as part of a multidisciplinary project to better understand the biology of SARS-CoV-2 and how it causes serious COVID-19 infections.

Source: Medindia



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