Differential salivary proteome of nonsyndromic cleft lip and/or palate patients with and without dental caries in comparison with nonaffected individuals.

OBJECTIVES

To compare the salivary proteome between nonsyndromic cleft lip and/or palate (nsCL/P) patients and nonaffected individuals using a cross-sectional study design, and exploring the influence of age, sex, caries and cleft type on the salivary proteome.

METHODS

Stimulated saliva samples were collected from 184 patients. Subjects with DMFT/dmft (sum of decayed/missing/filled teeth in both the permanent and deciduous dentition) ≥ 5 were classified as 'with caries'. Proteins were semi-quantified by mass spectrometry and analysed with Partial Least Square (PLS) in 101 patients (77 nsCL/P: 28 nsCP, 36 unilateral nsC/LP (nsUCLP), 13 bilateral nsC/LP (nsBCLP); and 24 controls), two-way ANOVA and post-hoc Fisher's tests. The contribution of caries, sex, age and cleft type to the proteome, including interaction between cleft type and caries were examined. Validation by PCA were conducted on 49 samples from validation sets.

RESULTS

Salivary proteomic differed significantly between nsCL/P and controls, as well as between cleft types. Protein abundance correlated strongly with age, followed by cleft type and sex, and weakly with caries. Across cleft types, the presence of caries was associated with consistently lower salivary protein abundance compared with noncaries groups, especially in nsBCLP. In total 35 proteins differed between patients with and without cleft, of which 19 proteins were consistently identified in both training and validation dataset.

CONCLUSIONS

The salivary proteome differs among nsCP, nsUCLP, nsBCLP and nonaffected subjects and is correlated with age, sex, cleft presence and cleft type, but weakly with caries. These differences may be clinically relevant for identifying oral health vulnerability in patients with nsCL/P and supporting personalized preventive strategies.