Table 1. Studies that employed salivary samples for molecular detection of novel corona virus.

No.	Study hypothesis	Study findings/ conclusion	Author and year of publication
1	Salivary testing from suspected COVID-19 patients based on clinical and epidemiological criteria.	nCoV was detected in the self-collected saliva of 91.7% of patients.	To et al 2020 5
2	Ferret model of SARS-COV-2 study employed to understand the infection and transmission that recapitulates aspects of human disease.	SARS COV-2 infected ferrets showed the presence of the virus in nasal washes and saliva up to 8 days postinfection.	Kim et al 2020 8
3	Analysis of COVID-19 from salivary samples of patients with known clinical and laboratory data. Samples were collected from patients with severe to very severe COVID-19 symptoms.	All the samples tested positive for nCoV. Interestingly, two patients showed positive salivary results while nasal swabs were negative.	Azzi et al 2020 9
4	Prediction of intrinsic disorder in MERS-CoV/HCoV-EMC supports a high oral-fecal transmission.	Oral-saliva and oral-urine routes are also a possibility for viral transmission.	Goh et al 2013 10
5	Viral replication in the upper respiratory tract may contribute to the rapid viral shedding into saliva droplets.	Demonstrated for the first time in the literature that the ACE2 epithelial cells of the salivary gland ducts are early targets of SARS-CoV infection. The findings provide evidence that salivary gland epithelial cells can be infected in vivo soon after infection, thus providing source of virus in saliva, particularly in early infection.	Liu et al 2011 4

Abbreviations: ACE2, angiotensin-converting enzyme 2; COVID-19, coronavirus disease 2019; HCoV-EMC, Human Corona Virus-Eramus Medical Center; MERS-CoV, Middle East respiratory syndrome-coronavirus, nCoV, novel coronavirus; SARS-CoV, severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus.