Despite the growing interest in salivary metabolomics, few studies have investigated the impact of aging on the salivary metabolome. The alterations in metabolic pathways that occur with aging are likely to be observed in pathologies affecting older people and may interfere with the search for salivary biomarkers. It is therefore important to investigate the age-related changes occurring in the salivary metabolome. Using reversed phase liquid chromatography and hydrophilic interaction chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry used in positive and negative ionization modes, the salivary metabolic profiles of young (22 to 45 years old) and older people (55 to 92 years old) were obtained. Those profiles were compared with the use of XCMS online to highlight the under or overexpression of some metabolites with aging. A total of 60 metabolites showed differential expression with age. The identification of 26 of them was proposed by the METLIN database and, among them, 17 were validated by standard injections. Aging seemed to affect most of the main metabolic pathways (amino acid metabolism, Krebs cycle, fatty acid synthesis, and nucleic acid synthesis). Moreover, most of the metabolites that were over- or under-expressed with age in this study have already been identified as being potential biomarkers of diseases affecting older people, such as in Alzheimer's disease. Special attention should be paid in the search for biomarkers of pathologies affecting the elderly to differentiate age-related changes from disease-related changes.
Keywords: LC-HRMS; aging; salivary metabolome.