Salivary Biomarker Alpha Defensins 1-4 In Bipolar Affective Disorder (Mania) And First Degree Relatives

Abstract

Saliva has been traditionally used to measure cortisol as a stress biomarker in neurology and neuropsychiatry in numerous studies. Recent studies demonstrated the whole saliva can be an alternative for detecting some relevant plasma clinical analytes. The goal of our study was to observe the levels of alpha defensins 1-4 levels in the saliva of patients with Bipolar disorder (BD), manic episode when they are symptomatic and after 2 weeks, in healthy controls and the first degree relatives (FDRs) of patients with BD .

Inpatients with the diagnosis were chosen after a complete physical examination. The samples taken were 33 Bipolar disorder (manic episode) patients and their respective FDRs along with 22 healthy controls. Our study found significant reduction in levels of alpha defensins 1, 2, 3 and 4 in saliva, in 2 weeks with treatment of mania. We also observed significantly higher values of Human alpha-defensins 1 and 2 in cases and FDRs when compared to controls, suggesting a possible association of Alpha defensins in pathophysiology of mania. Saliva’s role as an alternate biological fluid in study of biomarkers in psychiatric disorders can also be explored further as suggested by the results .