AUTHOR=Deneva Tanya , Ianakiev Youri , Boykinova Oliana 

TITLE=Salivary mental stress biomarkers in COVID-19 patients

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Medicine

VOLUME=9

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/medicine/articles/10.3389/fmed.2022.999215

DOI=10.3389/fmed.2022.999215

ISSN=2296-858X

ABSTRACT=<sec><title>Background</title><p>During the COVID-19 pandemic, mental health disorders and level of stress show a major increase compared to before the pandemic. Coronavirus-related stress is recently the leading cause of negative impacts on global mental health. Thus, maintaining positive mental health is as important as maintaining physical health during COVID-19. The aim of this study was to analyze salivary mental stress biomarkers as cortisol, alpha-amylase, and chromogranin A in hospitalized patients with COVID-19 to compare their potential relationship with stress symptoms.</p></sec><sec><title>Material and methods</title><p>A total of 80 adult hospitalized patients with moderate COVID-19 disease and a control group (<italic>n</italic> = 80) randomly selected were conducted as participants. Saliva cortisol (sCort), saliva alpha-amylase (sAA), and saliva and chromogranin A (sCgA) were determined by the ELISA method (Bio Vendor, USA). Symptoms of stress were measured with a stress symptom checklist (SSCL).</p></sec><sec><title>Results</title><p>The patients group presented significantly higher levels of sCort, sAA, and sCgA compared with the control group. The correlation analysis showed a positive correlation with strong strength between sCort and sAA (<italic>r</italic> = 0.934, <italic>p</italic> &lt; 0.01), as well as sAA with sCgA (<italic>r</italic> = 0.714, <italic>p</italic> &lt; 0.01). A moderate positive correlation was found between sCort with sCgA (<italic>r</italic> = 0.618, <italic>p</italic> &lt; 0.05). Based on their stress scores from the SSCL the patients were associated with high stress level (30.00%) and very high stress levels (67.5%). In terms of the controls, all the participants showed a low to moderate stress level. We found significant positive correlation between levels of stress and salivary biomarkers.</p></sec><sec><title>Conclusion</title><p>Data from our study demonstrated that salivary biomarkers are promising tools of exploring COVID-19 related stress.</p></sec>