Preprint Article Version 1 Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed

Salivary Biomarkers in COVID-19 Patients: The Rabbit out of the Hat!

Cecilia Napodano
ORCID logo ,
Cinzia Callà
,
Antonella Fiorita
,
Mariapaola Marino
,
Eleonora Taddei
,
Tiziana Di Cesare
,
Giulio Cesare Passali
,
Riccardo Disanto
,
Annunziata Stefanile
,
Massimo Fantoni
,
Andrea Urbani
,
Gaetano Paludetti
,
Gian Ludovico Rapaccini
,
Gabriele Ciasca
,
Umberto Basile
* ORCID logo
Version 1 : Received: 13 April 2021 / Approved: 15 April 2021 / Online: 15 April 2021 (12:06:40 CEST)

A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.

Napodano, C.; Callà, C.; Fiorita, A.; Marino, M.; Taddei, E.; Di Cesare, T.D.; Passali, G.C.; Di Santo, R.D.; Stefanile, A.; Fantoni, M.; Urbani, A.; Paludetti, G.; Rapaccini, G.L.; Ciasca, G.; Basile, U. Salivary Biomarkers in COVID-19 Patients: Towards a Wide-Scale Test for Monitoring Disease Activity. J. Pers. Med. 2021, 11, 385. Napodano, C.; Callà, C.; Fiorita, A.; Marino, M.; Taddei, E.; Di Cesare, T.D.; Passali, G.C.; Di Santo, R.D.; Stefanile, A.; Fantoni, M.; Urbani, A.; Paludetti, G.; Rapaccini, G.L.; Ciasca, G.; Basile, U. Salivary Biomarkers in COVID-19 Patients: Towards a Wide-Scale Test for Monitoring Disease Activity. J. Pers. Med. 2021, 11, 385.

Abstract

Background: The ongoing outbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) represents a major threat to human health, which impairs the functionality of several organs. One of the hardest challenges in the fight against COVID-19 is the development of wide-scale, effective, and rapid laboratory tests to control disease severity, progression, and possible sudden worsening. Monitoring patients in real-time is indeed highly demanded in this pandemic era when physicians need reliable and quantitative tools to prioritize patients’ access to intensive care departments. In this regard, salivary biomarkers are extremely promising, as they allow for a fast and non-invasive specimens’ collection, which can be repeated multiple times. Methods: We compare salivary levels of immunoglobulin A subclasses (IgA1 and IgA2) and free-light chains (FLC k and λ) in a cohort of 29 SARS-CoV-2 patients and 21 healthy subjects. Results: We found that each biomarkers differs significantly between the two groups, with p-values ranging from 10-8 to 10-4. The performance ranking of these markers, shows that λFLC level (p=1.4e-8) is the best-suited candidate to discriminate the two groups, with an accuracy of 0.94 (0.87-1.00 95% CI), a precision of 0.91 (0.81-1.00 95% CI), a sensitivity of 1.00 (0.96-1.00 95% CI) and a specificity of 0.86 (0.70-1.00 95% CI). Conclusion: These results suggest λFLC as an ideal indicator of patient conditions. This is more strengthened in consideration that λFLC half-life (approximately 6 hours) is significantly shorter than the IgA one (21 days): thus λFLC appears displaying the potential to effectively monitor patients fluctuation in real-time.

Keywords

COVID-19; IgA; FLC; salivary biomarkers

Subject

Biology and Life Sciences, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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