RESEARCH ARTICLE
Effect of Age on Flow-Rate, Protein and Electrolyte Composition of Stimulated Whole Saliva in Healthy, Non-Smoking Women
Liisi Sevón1, * , Merja A Laine1, Sára Karjalainen2, Anguelina Doroguinskaia1, Hans Helenius3, Endre Kiss4, Marjo Lehtonen-Veromaa5
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2008Volume: 2
First Page: 89
Last Page: 92
Publisher ID: TODENTJ-2-89
DOI: 10.2174/1874210600802010089
Article History:
Received Date: 27/2/2008Revision Received Date: 31/3/2008
Acceptance Date: 28/5/2008
Electronic publication date: 11/6/2008
Collection year: 2008
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/), which permits unrestrictive use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
As relatively little is known about the effect of age on salivary electrolytes we studied the composition of saliva as function of age to provide reference values for healthy non-smoking women. All non-medicated and non-smoking 30-59-year-old subjects (n=255) selected from among 1030 women participating in a screening program formed the material of the present study. Salivary calcium, inorganic phosphate, magnesium, sodium, potassium, protein and flow-rate of stimulated whole saliva were measured. We found age-related changes in salivary calcium and phosphate concentrations (p=0.001 and p=0.004, respectively, one-way ANOVA). Peak values occurred at around 50-54 years of age. Age had no effect on flow-rate, magnesium, sodium, potassium or proteins. The concentration of sodium correlated positively, while phosphate, potassium, magnesium and protein correlated negatively with the salivary flow-rate. Calcium was the only electrolyte which had no association with flow-rate. Our study provides reference values for salivary electrolytes of 30-59-year-old women.
