High similarity of IgG antibody profiles in blood and saliva opens opportunities for saliva based serology

PLoS One. 2019 Jun 20;14(6):e0218456. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0218456. eCollection 2019.

Abstract

Saliva based diagnostics is a rapidly evolving field due to the large diagnostic potential and simple sample collection. Currently only few individual molecules were investigated for their diagnostic capabilities in saliva. A systematic comparison of IgG antibody profiles in saliva and plasma is still missing in scientific literature. Our hypothesis is that IgG profiles in plasma and saliva are highly similar for each individual. As a consequence, one could implement practically any plasma based IgG assay (classical serology) as saliva based assay. In other words, the IgG antibodies found in blood are also accessible from saliva. We confirm our hypothesis by comparing IgG reactivities towards protein and peptide antigens. We isolated saliva IgG with high purity and demonstrate that plasma IgG reactivities (classical serology) can be inferred from saliva. As a showcase we perform Hepatitis B virus antibody (plasma-)titer determination from saliva. Additionally we show that plasma and saliva IgG profiles of 20 individuals are highly similar for 256 peptide antigens and match (unsupervised) with high probabilities. Finally, we argue for generalisation to the complete IgG antibody profile. The presented findings could contribute greatly to the development of saliva based diagnostic methods of numerous antibody based tests.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Antibodies, Viral / blood
  • Antibodies, Viral / immunology
  • Antibodies, Viral / isolation & purification*
  • Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay
  • Hepatitis B / blood*
  • Hepatitis B / virology
  • Hepatitis B virus / isolation & purification
  • Hepatitis B virus / pathogenicity
  • Humans
  • Immunoglobulin G / blood*
  • Immunoglobulin G / immunology
  • Saliva / immunology*

Substances

  • Antibodies, Viral
  • Immunoglobulin G

Grants and funding

This study was supported by the Jubiläumsfond (Anniversary Fund) of the Austrian National Bank (Österreichische Nationalbank) project number 15952 (grant recipient - Andreas Weinhäusel) and by the research programme Research Studios Austria by the FFG (Österreichische Forschungsförderungsgesellschaft mbH) under grant agreement number 859182, project PepPipe (grant recipient - Andreas Weinhäusel). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.