ArticleMolecular pain
Nociception related biomolecules in the adult human saliva: A scoping review with additional quantitative focus on cortisol.
Article in Molecular pain. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed, 3 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Burden of Preoperative Stress: Biological Mechanisms and Postoperative Outcomes.Brain sciences · 2026Review
- A Cross-Sectional Study of Salivary Cortisol, Alpha Amylase, and Measures of Psychological Distress in Children Undergoing Dental Procedures.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- A study of salivary cortisol and glutamate after the cold pressor task in healthy adults.PeerJ · 2025Article
- Nociception related biomolecules in the adult human saliva: A scoping review with additional quantitative focus on cortisol.Molecular painArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Nociception related salivary biomolecules can be useful patients who are not able to self-report pain. We present the existing evidence on this topic using the PRISMA-ScR guidelines and a more focused analysis of cortisol change after cold pain induction using the direction of effect analysis combined with risk of bias analysis using ROBINS-I. Five data bases were searched systematically for articles on adults with acute pain secondary to disease, injury, or experimentally induced pain. Forty three articles met the inclusion criteria for the general review and 11 of these were included in the cortisol-cold pain analysis. Salivary melatonin, kallikreins, pro-inflammatory cytokines, soluable TNF-α receptor II, secretory IgA, testosterone, salivary α-amylase (sAA) and, most commonly, cortisol have been studied in relation to acute pain. There is greatest information about cortisol and sAA which both rise after cold pain when compared with other modalities. Where participants have been subjected to both pain and stress, stress is consistently a more reliable predictor of salivary biomarker change than pain. There remain considerable challenges in identifying biomarkers that can be used in clinical practice to guide the measurement of nociception and treatment of pain. Standardization of methodology and researchers' greater awareness of the factors that affect salivary biomolecule concentrations are needed to improve our understanding of this field towards creating a clinically relevant body of evidence.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.