Whole saliva and the diagnosis of Sjögren's syndrome: an evaluation of patients who complain of dry mouth and dry eyes. Part 2: Immunologic findings.

UNLABELLED

Sjögren's syndrome (SS) is a multisystem, autoimmune disease characterised by generalised desiccation, exocrine hypofunction and serologic abnormalities. Last year we showed that the antibodies which are quasi-specific for diagnosis of SS, anti SS-A/Ro and anti SS-B/La, were present in the saliva of patients with this disease.

OBJECTIVE

To determine their presence in patients who complain of dry mouth and dry eyes.

SETTING

The study was conducted at the School of Dental Medicine, SUNY at Stony Brook.

PATIENTS

There were 49 patients (Mean Age = 54 +/- 13 years).

TESTS

Serum was analysed for the SS and other antibodies with "Western Blot Autoantibody Strips".

RESULTS

The findings showed that there was a strong correlation between the presence of the SS antibodies in the serum and the saliva. The SS antibodies were primarily found in the saliva of the patients whose resting and stimulated, whole saliva, flow rates were abnormally low. Antibodies to other autoimmune disease (lupus, scleroderma and mixed connective tissue disease) were also found in whole saliva.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings in Part 1 of this study, of patients who had complained of dry mouth and dry eyes, suggest that those patients, who demonstrated low resting and stimulated flow rates and had lacrimal hypofunction, suffered from SS. The observation in this paper, that the whole saliva of these patients contains the SS antibodies, confirms this diagnosis. The data suggest that whole saliva can be used to establish the diagnosis of SS and other autoimmune diseases.