The value of salivary proteins as diagnostic biomarkers has been investigated for a wide range of oral and systemic diseases. The purpose of this study is to review the current research evidence on the association between salivary protein profile and periodontal disease in children and adolescents between 6 and 18 years. This scoping review was informed by the Joanna Briggs Institute methodology for scoping reviews and followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews. Electronic searches were conducted using PubMed, Scopus, Embase, Web of Science and Google Scholar along with grey literature. The searches were limited to studies on humans, published from inception up to February 2025.The eligibility criteria were observational studies exploring correlations between salivary proteins and periodontal disease in children and adolescents during mixed and early permanent dentition (6–18 years). A descriptive analysis of the extracted data was conducted. A total of 15 primary studies met the eligibility criteria. The studies included in this review were published between 2004 and 2024 and comprised 10 analytical cross-sectional studies, followed by 3 case-control studies and two cohort studies. Across the 15 studies, a total of 1610 participants were recruited which included 860 males, and 750 females. Among the various proteins investigated, inflammatory cytokines (e.g., IL-6, IL-1β, TNF-α, MIP-1α, and MMP7) consistently demonstrated a strong association with both gingival inflammation and periodontal tissue destruction. Conversely, the total protein content and antimicrobial peptides were reported by one study each, but the findings were not statistically significant. The synthesis of studies included in this review shows a complex, albeit preliminary association between salivary protein profiles and periodontal status in young populations. The interpretations are tempered by significant heterogeneity and methodological limitations across the included studies. Observed trends, such as the elevation of specific markers (MIP-1α, IL-6, MMP7) in disease and glycoproteins in health, must be interpreted with caution due to variations in study design, sample collection, and analytical techniques. The inconsistent findings for total protein and cystatin C further underscore the preliminary nature of these results. Therefore, while salivary proteins represent a promising avenue for future research, their role as reliable biomarkers for diagnosis and monitoring cannot be confirmed from the existing body of evidence, which highlights a need for more standardized investigations with longitudinal data. The study protocol was registered in the Open science framework (Registration DOI https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/WRSN4). Not applicable.
Raja et al. (Sat,) studied this question.