Cancer and Heart Attack Diagnostic as Simple as Checking Your Mouth

Standard diagnostic tests can be painful. They can involve lengthy and costly procedures. Wouldn't it be nice for a doctor to simply aim a medical tricorder a la Star Trek at the patient and to come up with a diagnostic within seconds? We are not quite there yet, but we are getting closer. Scientists have begun to discover that our mouth contains a wealth of information. With the proper analytic method our mouth can provide an accurate diagnostic tool of our health. In the future you might hear your doctor say, "Open your mouth wide and say 'aaah'. And now spit in this cup."

No more lengthy annual physical, it seems your saliva and a swap of the tissue lining your mouth will be all that's needed in the future to get an accurate diagnostic of what might currently ail you. Thus far, they can detect certain cancer types and the risk of heart attack. And the diagnostic tools needed are cheap and easy to use. Will this approach revolutionalize the health care industry?

Dentists have known for years, the condition of your teeth and the inside of your mouth can be a great indicator of your overall health. The mouth is a window to your overall health. The first connection came, when it was discovered that tooth decay and periodontal disease could lead to other ailments elsewhere in the body. Therefore, maintaining healthy teeth and gums is not only important to prevent tooth decay and tooth loss.

The majority of adults have at least at one point in their live experienced oral disease. According to the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research 92% of adults in the US have experienced dental caries in their permanent teeth. 23% have untreated caries. 10% of adults over the age of 50 have lost all of their permanent teeth. In addition 8.52% suffer from periodontal disease. These oral health problems can cause changes to the bio-chemical balance in your mouth and consequently elsewhere in your body. But besides these rather obvious signs, there are also other biomarkers in your mouth such as the presence or lack of certain bacteria, and genetic changes in the tissue lining the inside of your mouth.

This is the kind of information, which has captured the attention of scientists worldwide. They are researching these changes as indicators of your overall health. And they are working on developing diagnostic tools to accurately detect health problems throughout your body by simply swiping/brushing the inside of your mouth and/or obtaining a saliva sample. These tools are easy to use and much more cost-efficient than the standard diagnostic methods currently used. This will eventually make the expensive machinery obsolete, which is currently used in hospitals and doctors' offices across the nation. This approach may also finally be a method to manage the exploding health care costs we have experienced in recent years.

In January scientists Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center developed a simple "Swish-and-Spit" test for the detection of head and neck cancer. The test is as easy to use as mouth rinse and captures common genetic signatures of head and neck cancer in the patient's mouth. The test is cost-efficient, easy, and painless. The test can be an effective tool in detecting head and neck cancer in its early stages.

Just recently scientists at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center announced their findings of the oral tissue lining as an indicator for lung cancer. According to their study, a simple swap or brushing of the inside the mouth can provide enough tissue samples to test a patient for lung cancer. The tissue inside the mouth apparently shows the same genetic changes as a tissue sample from inside the lung might show.

Now scientists at the University of Texas at Austin have determined that our saliva can indicate whether we are suffering or will soon be suffering from a heart attack. Their research may provide an early and simple diagnosis and expedite proper treatment.

The Austin scientists developed a nano-bio-chip the size of a credit card. The patient's saliva is gathered in a tube and transferred to the card, which in turn is inserted into an analyzer. The analyzer machine checks for proteins, which are known to cause cardiac disease. A diagnosis can be reached within fifteen minutes.

The diagnosis can be either that the patient is currently suffering a heart attack or is at a high risk of having one in the future. With swift treatment being crucial for heart attack victims, such a diagnostic tool can mean the difference between life and death.

With such great leaps being made in recent years in the development of non-invasive tests for deadly diseases, one can only hope that expensive diagnostic machinery and lengthy analytical tests will soon be a thing of the past. More patients may seek diagnosis and treatment without the fear of escalating costs and rise in health insurance premiums. Hopefully we have finally found a way to reduce the explosive cost development we have experienced in the healthcare industry in the last decades. Hopefully, we can make healthcare affordable again.