Fig. 1.

Statherin levels in the saliva of patients with diabetes and healthy age- and gender-matched controls as measured by immunoblot analysis. Stimulated parotid saliva (PS) and sublingual/submandibular saliva (SS) were collected as described in Materials and methods section and then subjected to 4–20% gradient SDS-PAGE, followed by Western blotting for statherin, and quantification using Scion Image software. Panel A: a representative gel of salivary statherin in 0.125 μL saliva (PS and SS) collected from diabetic patients and controls. ST: prescreened PS sample used for quantitation (see Materials and methods section). Panel B: statherin levels in saliva were determined by converting the stained region of the immunoblot (for each sample) into a density value. The relative statherin level was expressed as the ratio of statherin band density for an individual subject to the standard PS sample run on each gel. The box plots show the 1st and 3rd quartiles, median (horizontal line between the 1st and 3rd quartiles) and outliers (open circles) [more than 1.5 × (3rd–1st quartiles)].