Dental News speaks with Dr S Faraz Moin, and Dr Zohaib Khurshid about their research 'Differentially Expressed Salivary Proteins in Dental Caries Patients' recently published in Hindawi.
Dr Zohaib has been the first Pakistani dental researcher to start working on human salivary proteomics, gingival crevicular proteomics, and platelet-rich proteins (PRPs) proteomics in collaboration with Dr Faraz Moin at National Center for Proteomics, Karachi University, Pakistan. Both mutually explore the area of dental proteomics for the diagnosis of oral diseases.
Dental caries has been the most prevalent oral disease in which dental hard tissue demineralizes in oral microbes produced acidic environment.
In this study, the protein profiling of control and diseased saliva samples showed specific expressional differences. It has been among the few initial studies in the locality to identify protein differences in saliva from dental caries patients and has demonstrated an excellent potential to identify alterations.
Dental News: How is your study different from the previous studies on the interrelation of salivary proteins and dental caries?
Response: Our study differed from previous studies concerning the protease activity levels in dental caries patients.
Dental News: Do you think different pathological conditions affect the salivary composition in patients with and without significant caries, and how?
Response: Yes, for example, the metalloprotease activity was high in dental caries saliva samples due to the degradation of structural proteins like collagen. In contrast, the dietary proteins such as casein in milk were actively digested in healthy control saliva samples.
Dental News: Does your research have the potential to create the breakthrough in preventing dental caries, and how?
Response: It is too early to say anything about it, but our research has set a baseline of findings in dental caries saliva samples of the local population. Moreover, it has opened the corridor for the future Point-Of-Care (POC) technology for dental disease detection and prevention.
Dental News: Being an experienced researcher, which salivary variables, according to you, should be focused on more to create novel discoveries?
Response: We would say that the differential expression of proteins and peptides are a definite choice to create novel discoveries.
Dental News: How do people enhance saliva's protective effects to prevent dental caries, especially in Pakistan, where dental caries are pretty prevalent?
Response: Oral hygiene and eating habits are two main factors in our population and worldwide that should be kept in check so that the saliva in the oral cavity would stay in a constant healthy biological composition.
Dr Hiba Shams
The author is an Assistant Editor at Dental News Pakistan and can be reached at hiba@medicalnewsgroup.com.pk
