Table 1.

Antimicrobial Peptides in Saliva

Peptide	Origin	Role/comments	Major Oral Microbial Targets	References
Alpha-defensins HNP 1–4	Neutrophils, gingival sulcus, sites of inflammation, salivary duct cells	Antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral. Present in GCF	Candida albicans HIV S. mutans (poor)	(Raj et al., 2000; Zhang et al., 2002) [43, 44]
LL-37	Neutrophils, gingival sulcus, salivary glands and ducts	Primarily antibacterial	S. mutans F. nucleatum A. actinomycetemcomitans Capnocytophaga sputigena	(Ouhara et al., 2005; Tanaka et al., 2000) [17, 19]
Beta-defensins hBD1 hBD2 hBD3	Epithelia, salivary ducts	Antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral. Part of the protective barrier function of epithelium. Secreted	hBD1: Poor antibacterial hBD2, hBD3: S. mutans S. sanguis F. nucleatum P. gingivalis Candida albicans HIV	(Joly et al., 2004; Maisetta et al., 2003; Quinones-Mateu et al., 2003)[15, 20, 18]
Histatins	Salivary glands/ducts	Antifungal	Candida albicans	(Oppenheim et al., 1988) [6]