Applications of Salivary Bioscience to Precision Medicine

Abstract

Precision medicine is an approach to treating mental and physical illness that aims to optimize treatment effectiveness by using individual genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors to determine which approaches will be effective for which patients. Salivary biomarkers enable noninvasive measurement of both state and trait individual differences in genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors. In this chapter, the history and future directions of precision medicine will be summarized. Within this summary, we will review the role salivary bioscience has played in identifying moderators of treatment effects and explaining treatment efficacy across several prevalent and costly physical and mental conditions. Finally, this chapter will discuss the ways in which salivary bioscience could be used to advance the larger goals of precision medicine. We will highlight how salivary bioscience has the potential to overcome the feasibility barriers that have prevented many of the latest innovations in evidence-based precision medicine to be adopted by health care providers in primary and community settings.