Saliva test may diagnose illness

LIVERMORE, Calif., April 11 (UPI) -- A portable, phone-sized test that measures proteins in saliva might detect a developing disease in minutes, says a U.S. study.

Researchers envision a dentist collecting a small saliva sample, loading it into a diagnostic cartridge and having a readout waiting after a dental cleaning or a dental procedure, according to a report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"The IMPOD is designed to measure up to 20 analytes, or biochemicals, at once," senior author Dr. Anup Singh, a chemical engineer at the Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, Calif., said in a statement.

"We haven't scaled up to that point, but we are doing multi-analyte analyses in the laboratory. The basic engineering of the device has been completed."

Saliva is a mirror of blood, but at concentrations 1,000 to 10,000 times lower, so the test needs a sensitivity 1,000 to 10,000 times better than screening blood, according to Singh.