saliva vs. serum

[miss arron]

my sister went to a new doctor recently and he ordered some lab tests for her, but not serum, saliva. i have no experience with saliva testing so i was skeptical. i tried doing some research online but couldn't find anything much other using it as a screening test for HIV and that's it's promising for future use but it's not a developed technology.

does any one have any info they could pass on? thanks!

[APBT mom, LPN, RN]

I know that there is a saliva test that they can use to test hormone levels. We use to do them at the OB/GYN office to test patients for menopause. The problem with the test we used were that the patients had to save their saliva throughout the day. A lot of the patients would wait intil the weekend so they weren't spitting into a vial all day long. They had to fill the tube with 45-60 ml of saliva or the test would be inconclusive. We had to many come back that needed to be repeated so we stopped using them.

ETA: Google saliva tests for hormones and you'll get tons of information.