Salivary Glucose: A Metabolic Disease Marker and a Risk Factor for Oral Disease Development

Hyperglycemia is a defining characteristic of diabetes and also occurs in pre-diabetic states. Normal blood glucose levels are between 70 and 100mg/dL. Blood levels of greater than 100mg/dL glucose are recognized as being hyperglycemic. Glucose levels of greater than 125mg/dLare recognized as being diabetic. Impaired glucosetolerance (fasting glucose > 110mg/dL) was investigated in a large cohort of individuals (112,960 Japanese) including a wide age span (14-94) over 15 years. From these data (Figure 1) we see that impaired glucose tolerance occurred in males before females but levels do not become an important factor in the population until around the age of 30. Even though this characteristic would likely differ considerably among world populations, the point here is that hyperglycemia occurs as individuals become adult and is rare in children. Most hyperglycemic children would be those with Type 1 diabetes. In a study of 10-year old Kuwaiti children Goodson et al. [1], only 2% of the children had salivary glucose values that would suggest hyperglycemia.