Detection of minor salivary glands affected in Sjogren's syndrome by Raman spectroscopy.

Sjogren's syndrome(SS) is defined as a slowly processing autoimmune inflammatory exocrinopathy affecting the salivary and lachrymal glands. Due to the difficulty in reaching a diagnosis in some SS cases, there are many criteria published for classification and diagnosis. Among the most of criteria, lip biopsy plays an important role in clinical diagnosis, but it is an invasive and complex method which always causes patients' pain and discomfort. Raman spectroscopy is a noninvasive and real-time vibrational spectroscopic technique applied in the clinical detection and diagnosis of diseases. The diagnostic sensitivity and specificity are both high. The hypothesis is to detect the minor salivary glands affected in SS by the noninvasive Raman spectroscopy instead of lip biopsy. Therefore, Raman spectroscopy may increase the diagnostic sensitivity and specificity, meanwhile prevent patients from pain caused by biopsy.