Is Saliva helpful in properly detecting Omicron?
Dr. D.Sendhil Nathan MDS, DNB Prosthodontics And Implantology
Saliva is inevitable for your oral health’s well-being. It takes care of moistening your mouth, promoting teeth remineralization, healing oral wounds, protecting mucous membranes, lubricating your mouth to make chewing and swallowing easy, and much more. Saliva can also be used as an active agent in detecting COVID-19.
However, doctors preferred nasal swaps to diagnose corona infection due to various reasons. As Covid 19’s new variant Omicron is highly contagious thereby it is spreading rapidly. The covid test check-ups are also performed in a full swing nowadays. Recent studies show that saliva-based tests are significantly better than nasal tests in detecting omicron infection.
After referring various studies and discussing with healthcare professionals, our dental team has explained the role of the watery secretion in the mouth to pinpoint omicron.
Are saliva swabs better than nasal swabs in detecting Omicron?
The spike gene in omicron variants has deletion mutation so that it cannot be identified with PCR test. This is known as the s-gene target failure approach. With this, doctors distinguish omicron from other covid variants like alpha, delta.
In saliva tests for COVID-19, the patient has a spit in a sterile tube and it is sent to PCR test. As saliva contains enzymes that chew up nucleic acids and inhibitors that intervene in the DNA amplification to diagnose the virus. Hence nasal mid-turbinate swabs are used highly for Covid-19 tests. Meanwhile, saliva tests were believed to be suitable for people showing mild symptoms.
As Omicron appears less severe than other variants of coronavirus, doctors believe it can be detected efficiently with the saliva-based test.
Latest researches also ensure this fact. In a recent study conducted with saliva swabs and nasal swabs in omicron diagnosis, researchers observed that saliva-based tests exhibit 100% whereas nasal tests showed 86% positive percent in detecting omicron infections.
In contrast, the test results can be affected by poor oral habits and common infections in the mouth.
What are the possible factors that affect saliva-based test results?
- Smoking
- Alcohol consumption
- Sore throat lozenges
- Certain ingredients in toothpaste
- Acidic substances in mouthwash
These are assumptions but are powerful to affect the production of adequate specimens thereby affecting the test results directly or indirectly.
How does saliva-based testing help detect omicron infections?
Saliva-based testing is the right alternative for people who are scared to do the deep swab nose test. Similarly, it has certain advantages over nose swab PCR tests.
- It can give 12 times more positive results than a nasal test to detect the presence of omicron.
- Highly scalable
- It can be taken easily and processed quickly.
- The risk posed to healthcare workers in sample collection is also less with this test.
In essence, many healthcare workers, latest reports show that nose swab PCR tests provide accurate results to detect delta variants whereas saliva-based PCR tests show more accurate results in omicron variant diagnosis. In the current scenario, maintaining oral healthcare is essential to detect omicron properly.
