Caries clinical trials at UCSF

Saliva insulin shows promise as a non-invasive biomarker of high carbohydrate intake and/or insulin resistance, key risk factors for metabolic dysregulation and caries. Saliva insulin monitoring could potentially inform the planning and evaluation of interventions to prevent child obesity, diabetes and caries, without relying on self-reported measures from children, parents, child care providers or teachers. School-based public health screening programs, which have staff and data collection infrastructure in place to regularly and systematically collect saliva during oral health screening, have opportunity to monitor saliva insulin. This randomized controlled trial explores if saliva insulin is responsive to the kinds of obesity and caries intervention currently in progress in schools, namely drinking water intervention. Public health programs may justify adding saliva collection to protocol already in place if saliva insulin data are found to be actionable, i.e. sensitive to risk and intervention.