RESEARCH ARTICLE
Salivary Alpha-Amylase Activity and Salivary Flow Rate in Young Adults
Aristidis Arhakis1, *, Vasilis Karagiannis2, Sotirios Kalfas1
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2013Volume: 7
First Page: 7
Last Page: 15
Publisher ID: TODENTJ-7-7
DOI: 10.2174/1874210601307010007
Article History:
Received Date: 25/9/2012Revision Received Date: 28/11/2012
Acceptance Date: 18/12/2012
Electronic publication date: 22/2/2013
Collection year: 2013

open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.
Abstract
The secretion of salivary alpha-amylase (sAA) is more associated with psychoneuroendocrinological response to stress than with the flow rate and age. The aim of this cross sectional study is to build an explanatory model based on patterns of relationship between age 20-39 in resting and stimulated saliva under no stressful condition in healthy volunteers. Both resting and stimulated saliva were collected from 40 subjects. The sAA values were log-transformed, the normality assumption was verified with the Shapiro-Wilk test and the reliability of the measurements was estimated by the Pearsons’ r correlation coefficient. The estimated model was based on the theory of the Linear Mixed Models. Significant mean changes were observed in flow rate and sAA activity between resting and stimulated saliva. The final model consists of two components, the first revealed a positive correlation between age and sAA while the second one revealed a negative correlation between the interaction of age × flow rate in its condition (resting or stimulated saliva), with sAA. Both flow rate and age influence sAA activity.