Program in Public Health, Susan and Henry Samueli College of Health Sciences, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, United States.
Institute for Interdisciplinary Salivary Bioscience Research, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, United States.
Front Public Health. 2023 Jun 22;11:1088043. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2023.1088043. eCollection 2023.
Salivary bioscience has found increased utilization within pediatric research, given the non-invasive nature of self-collecting saliva for measuring biological markers. With this growth in pediatric utility, more understanding is needed of how social-contextual factors, such as socioeconomic factors or status (SES), influence salivary bioscience in large multi-site studies. Socioeconomic factors have been shown to influence non-salivary analyte levels across childhood and adolescent development. However, less is understood about relationships between these socioeconomic factors and salivary collection methodological variables (e.g., time of saliva collection from waking, time of day of saliva collection, physical activity prior to saliva collection, and caffeine intake prior to saliva collection). Variability in salivary methodological variables between participants may impact the levels of analytes measured in a salivary sample, thus serving as a potential mechanism for non-random systematic biases in analytes.
Our objective is to examine relationships between socioeconomic factors and salivary bioscience methodological variables within the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study© cohort of children aged 9-10 years old ( = 10,567 participants with saliva samples).
We observed significant associations between household socioeconomic factors (poverty status, education) and salivary collection methodological variables (time since waking, time of day of sampling, physical activity, and caffeine intake). Moreover, lower levels of household poverty and education were significantly associated with more sources of potential bias in salivary collection methodological variables (e.g., longer times since waking, collections later in the day, higher odds of caffeine consumption, and lower odds of physical activity). Consistent associations were not observed with neighborhood socioeconomic factors and salivary methodological variables.
Previous literature demonstrates associations between collection methodological variables and measurements of salivary analyte levels, particularly with analytes that are more sensitive to circadian rhythms, pH levels, or rigorous physical activity. Our novel findings suggest that unintended distortions in measured salivary analyte values, potentially resulting from the non-random systematic biases in salivary methodology, need to be intentionally incorporated into analyses and interpretation of results. This is particularly salient for future studies interested in examining underlying mechanisms of childhood socioeconomic health inequities in future analyses.
由于自我采集唾液来测量生物标志物具有非侵入性，唾液生物科学在儿科研究中得到了越来越多的应用。随着儿科应用的增加，我们需要更多地了解社会背景因素（如社会经济因素或地位（SES））如何影响大型多站点研究中的唾液生物科学。社会经济因素已被证明会影响整个儿童和青少年发育过程中的非唾液分析物水平。然而，人们对这些社会经济因素与唾液采集方法学变量（例如，从醒来开始采集唾液的时间、采集唾液的一天中的时间、采集唾液前的体力活动以及采集唾液前的咖啡因摄入）之间的关系了解甚少。参与者之间唾液采集方法学变量的差异可能会影响唾液样本中分析物的水平，因此这可能是分析物中存在非随机系统偏差的潜在机制。
我们的目标是在青少年大脑认知发育研究©队列中检查社会经济因素与 9-10 岁儿童（ = 10,567 名有唾液样本的参与者）唾液生物科学方法变量之间的关系。
我们观察到家庭社会经济因素（贫困状况、教育程度）与唾液采集方法学变量（醒来后时间、采样时间、体力活动和咖啡因摄入）之间存在显著关联。此外，家庭贫困程度和教育程度较低与唾液采集方法学变量中更多潜在偏差来源显著相关（例如，醒来后时间较长、白天较晚采集、咖啡因摄入的几率较高、体力活动的几率较低）。与邻里社会经济因素和唾液方法学变量之间没有观察到一致的关联。
先前的文献表明，收集方法变量与唾液分析物水平的测量之间存在关联，特别是与对昼夜节律、pH 值或剧烈体力活动更敏感的分析物。我们的新发现表明，需要将测量唾液分析物值中不可避免的扭曲，可能是由于唾液方法学中的非随机系统偏差，有意纳入分析和解释结果中。对于未来研究中感兴趣的、未来分析中儿童社会经济健康不平等的潜在机制的研究，这一点尤为重要。
