A saliva test can more accurately indicate the severity of recurrent respiratory infections in children than the standard blood test. If saliva contains too few broadly protective antibodies, a child is more likely to suffer from pneumonia episodes. This is reported by researchers from Radboudumc Amalia Children's Hospital and UMC Utrecht Wilhelmina Children's Hospital in the European Respiratory Journal.
Saliva testing provides valuable information for treatment and is more comfortable for children. About ten to fifteen percent of all children suffer from recurrent respiratory infections. When they visit the hospital, blood is drawn to search for antibody deficiencies as an underlying condition.
However, this rarely yields useful results. 'This is challenging for pediatricians because we really want to help the children', says pediatric infectious disease specialist/immunologist Lilly Verhagen of Radboud university medical center. 'Therefore, we investigated whether we could find out more about the severity of the disease in another way.
That would be very valuable in determining which children need more care and when it makes sense to give antibiotics.' Broad protection A study involving one hundred children with recurrent respiratory infections shows that saliva measurements better indicate the severity of the disease than blood measurements. We found no relationship between antibodies in the blood and disease burden.
But in saliva, we observed broadly protective antibodie.