Scientists are reporting development of a device that could serve as the electronic "reader" for a coming generation of "wellness cards," specimen holders used to diagnose disease from a drop of a patient's saliva or blood.

A report by scientists from The Netherlands published online in The FASEB Journal identifies a compound in human saliva that greatly speeds wound healing.

In a simple experiment on a mixture of water, surfactant (soap), and an organic salt, two researchers working in the Pritchard Fluid Mechanics Laboratory at Penn State have shown that a rigid object like a knife passes through the mixture at slow speeds as if it were a liquid, but rips it up as if it were a rubbery solid when the knife moves rapidly.

Hormones in children's saliva may be a biological indicator of the trauma kids undergo when they are chronically bullied by peers, according to researchers who say biological markers can aid in the early recognition and intervention of long-term psychological effects on youth.

Oral fluids hold promise as a potential alternative to blood as a diagnostic fluid. Currently, diseases like HIV, hepatitis, and certain cancers can be detected through the analysis of oral fluids. In the past, it has been difficult to detect meaningful amounts of disease markers in oral fluids, because they are not always found in the same abundance as in blood.

Today, during the 85th General Session of the International Association for Dental Research, scientists are reporting that the use of saliva for clinical detection of major human diseases is only a few years away. Intense research is ongoing to discover diagnostic saliva biomarkers. A necessary prerequisite is to know, in a comprehensive manner, the informative biomarkers in saliva: the diagnostic alphabets.