OBJECTIVES Sex hormones affect physical, mental, and social health, yet their role in mediating social effects on aging is understudied. To facilitate such analyses with the National Social Life, Health & Aging Project Wave 2, we summarize the conceptual background, collection protocols, laboratory assays, and data analysis strategies for biologically active (free) levels of testosterone, estra...

We describe a direct radioimmunoassay for cortisol in 10-microliter volumes of parotid saliva or whole saliva. Binding proteins are absent from these fluids, as demonstrated by the excellent correlation between results for samples assayed directly and by a comparison procedure involving extraction with 1,2-dichloroethane. The direct assay is specific, precise, and had a lower limit of sensitivi...

BACKGROUND The purpose of this study was to validate a commercially available enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) developed for measuring free cortisol in human saliva and total cortisol concentration in diluted human serum, for its applicability in measuring cortisol concentration in pig saliva. Collection of saliva is less stressful than e.g. blood sampling, and is a non-invasive method...

OBJECTIVE Dioxin (polychlorinated dibenzodioxins+polychlorinated dibenzofurans) is one of the most toxic chemical substances known. Although it is suspected to cause endocrine disruption, very few epidemiological studies have been carried out on its effects on human steroid hormones. The aim of this study was to elucidate the association of dioxin exposure with steroid hormone levels in the sal...

This competitive, solid-phase enzymoimmunoassay for testosterone in saliva is carried out on microtiter plates and involves no chromatographic or extraction steps. With an overnight incubation the detection limit of the assay is 230 fg per well (16.1 pmol/L). There was a good correlation (correlation coefficient 0.95) between testosterone concentrations measured with and without prior extractio...

Saliva, as a medium for assessing adrenocortical function in humans, has many advantages and a few distinct disadvantages. Interpretation of measurements of saliva cortisol is complicated by the contamination of saliva by steroid-binding proteins from blood plasma, enzyme activity in the salivary gland that converts cortisol to cortisone, and the amplification in saliva of the episodic fluctuat...

Congenital cytomegalovirus (cCMV) infection is a leading non-genetic cause of sensorineural hearing. Alethia CMV assay proved to be accurate, simple and appears suitable for testing using neonatal saliva. However, long storage swab samples not validated across different time periods temperature. This study verifies the effects temperature in detection from saliva molecular developed by Alethia.

OBJECTIVES Cationic antimicrobial peptides (CAPs) are the effector molecules of innate immunity, similar in potency to classic antibiotics that function in the first-line of defence against infectious agents. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of negatively charged mucins on the antibacterial activity of the positively charged cathelicidin LL-37 peptide, its synthetic anal...

BACKGROUND Congenital cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection is an important cause of hearing loss, and most infants at risk for CMV-associated hearing loss are not identified early in life because of failure to test for the infection. The standard assay for newborn CMV screening is rapid culture performed on saliva specimens obtained at birth, but this assay cannot be automated. Two alternatives--rea...