Saliva Testing Can Now Diagnose Throat & Mouth Cancer At Early Stages

With more than 53000 Americans diagnosed with mouth and throat cancer every year, the disease is increasing in incidence, particularly amongst the younger population. Early detection of these cancers is difficult since they are not noticed either by the patients or by their healthcare providers during routine medical examinations.

But a recent report has demonstrated that a new method named ‘acoustofluidics’ can be used to look for the presence of a certain virus in the saliva which is strongly associated with these cancers. The test successfully detected oropharyngeal cancers (OPC) in about 40% of the patients who underwent testing.

Because of the sexually transmitted virus, human papillomavirus strain 16 (HPV 16), the number of OPCs has been on the rise each year, especially in developed nations. In addition to preventing high-risk sexual behavior that causes the spread of the virus, this study highlights a big step in controlling the disease in its early stages.

Prevention is indeed better than cure and in this case, primary prevention including passing on the message of responsible sexual behavior such as abstinence until the time you are ready to enter this phase of life without incurring health risks, fears or regrets.

“OPC is one of the fastest rising cancers in Western countries due to increasing HPV-related incidence, especially in younger patients. It is paramount that surveillance methods are developed to improve early detection and outcomes,” News Medical Life Sciences quoted the lead researcher Tony Jun Huang.

The technology they used combined microfluidics and acoustics to build a tiny 'acoustofluidic' chip that separated exosomes in the saliva by removing unnecessary particles using a size-gradient isolation method. The researchers collected saliva samples from 10 different patients who had HPV-linked OPC diagnosed via conventional methods. Upon 'acoustofluidic' testing, they found HPV-16 DNA in about 80% of those individuals.

What makes this method advantageous is that it doesn’t change its efficiency in diagnosis even if the saliva of a patient gets more or less viscous. It is an automated and rapid process that can yield isolates exosomes as early as 5 minutes compared to the conventional processes which might take more than 8 hours. Also, it costs much lower than other similar technologies used currently. Repeated examinations are also possible since this testing is very much non-invasive, allowing continuous long-term monitoring of patients to assess the progression of the tumor. This testing method can be easily put into practice clinically.