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Clinical Chemistry 46: 1409-1410, 2000;
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(Clinical Chemistry. 2000;46:1409-1410.)
© 2000 American Association for Clinical Chemistry, Inc.

Technical Briefs

None of Four Commercially Available Assays Detects Prolactin in Human Saliva

Jos H.H. Thijssen1,a, Stephanie H.M. Van Goozen2, Herman Van Engeland2, Luz M.P. Matute1 and Marinus A. Blankenstein1,3

1 Endocrinological Laboratory,
2 Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and
3 Central Diagnostic Laboratory, University Medical Center Utrecht, KC03.063.0, PO Box 85090, 3508 AB Utrecht, The Netherlands
a author for correspondence: fax 31-30-250-5378, e-mail J.Thijssen@Lab.AZU.NL

In psychobiological and psychopathological studies, biological markers are used as indicators for changes in neurotransmitters in the central nervous system. The concentration and/or turnover of serotonin, dopamine, glutamine, and other neurotransmitters can partly be deduced from information obtained on the concentrations of hormones in blood after specific stimulation. This "endocrine window" is of major importance for studies in the field of biological psychiatry.

More recently, it has been discovered that the measurement of certain hormones in saliva can be used as a good reflection of the plasma or serum concentrations of these hormones, which certainly seems to be true for steroid hormones such as cortisol, androstenedione, 17-hydroxyprogesterone, and testosterone. Saliva can be collected more easily and more frequently than blood, and its collection causes much less stress. Cortisol measurements in saliva in particular have received much attention.

In a very recent publication, the concentration of salivary prolactin was described as a marker of central serotonin turnover in rhesus macaques (1). In this report, saliva concentrations of prolactin between 4 and 17 µg/L were described, concentrations which are similar to those in the plasma/serum of human subjects. Although any addition to the possibilities for obtaining information on central neurotransmitters is of great practical importance, we had reservations with respect to the permeability of the human salivary cell membrane to relatively large molecules such as prolactin. Therefore, we decided to assess the concentrations of prolactin in human saliva. In a pilot study, we were unable to measure prolactin in saliva, using an assay (Abbott AxSYM) that is capable of measuring 0.2 µg/L prolactin and therefore has a detection limit that is at least 10-fold lower than the assay used by Lindell et al. (1).

Because of these results, we conducted a more systematic study on salivary prolactin concentrations . . . [Full Text of this Article]


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