Peer-reviewed veterinary case report
Measuring muscle damage enzymes in dog saliva for diagnosis
By Tvarijonaviciute, Asta et al.·Published in BMC veterinary research·2017·Animal Medicine and Surgery Department, Spain·View original on PubMed →
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Original publication title: Measurement of Creatine kinase and Aspartate aminotransferase in saliva of dogs: a pilot study.
- Species:
- dog
Plain-English summary
A study found that muscle enzymes, specifically Creatine kinase (CK) and Aspartate aminotransferase (AST), can be measured in the saliva of dogs. In healthy dogs, CK levels were between 27 and 121 U/L and AST levels were between 46 and 144 U/L. However, dogs with muscle damage showed significantly higher levels of CK (132 to 3862 U/L) and AST (154 to 4340 U/L). This suggests that testing saliva for these enzymes could help identify muscle damage in dogs, providing a non-invasive way to monitor their health.
People also search for: dog muscle damage symptoms · elevated CK AST in dogs · dog saliva test for muscle injury
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Muscle enzymes in saliva have been reported to be possible markers of heart and muscle damage in humans. The aim of this study was to assess if Creatine kinase (CK) and Aspartate aminotransferase (AST) activities could be measured in canine saliva, and to evaluate their possible changes in situations of muscle damage. RESULTS: The spectrophotometric assays for CK and AST measurement in saliva of dogs showed intra- and inter-assay imprecision lower than 1 and 16% and coefficients of correlation close to 1 in linearity under dilution tests. Healthy dogs showed activities in saliva of CK between 27 and 121 U/L and AST between 46 and 144 U/L, whereas in saliva of dogs with muscle damage CK ranged between 132 and 3862 U/L and AST between 154 and 4340 U/L. Positive moderate correlations were found between saliva and serum activities of the two enzymes (CK, r = 0.579; P = 0.001; AST, r = 0.674; P = 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: CK and AST activities can be measured in canine saliva with commercially available spectrophotometric assays. In addition these enzymes show higher values in saliva of dogs with muscle damage and their values are moderately correlated with those of serum.
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Search related cases →Original publication on PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28599668/