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Effect of Zinc Status on Salivary Zinc Concentrations in the Rat¹

SEA-AR, U.S. Plant, Soil, and Nutrition Laboratory, Ithaca, New York 14853

Three experiments were done to determine whether salivary zinc concentration is a more sensitive indicator of zinc status than plasma zinc. Weanling male rats fed a low zinc (<1 ppm) diet for 5 weeks with or without zinc (100 ppm) in the drinking water had salivary zinc concentrations of 0.19, 0.16, and 0.20 µg/ml for the zinc-deficient, zinc-supplemented restricted-intake, and zinc-supplemented ad libitum-fed groups, respectively. Combined values for male and female rats after 4 weeks of the same treatments in experiment 2 were 0.60, 1.2, and 0.44 µg/ml. Saliva collected on day 22 of pregnancy contained 0.30 and 0.24 µg/ml from zinc-supplemented and zinc-deficient rats, respectively. Salivary zinc concentrations in the deficient rats did not differ from those of the zinc-supplemented ad libitum-fed controls in any of the experiments. Salivary zinc concentration in the zinc-supplemented restricted-intake group in experiment 2 was significantly higher than that in the other two groups. Decreases in serum, bone, and fetal zinc concentrations indicated that the rats were definitely zinc-deficient. Since zinc concentration of mixed saliva in the rat was not decreased by even a severe zinc deficiency, salivary zinc does not appear to be as good an indicator of zinc status as plasma zinc.

KEY WORDS: • salivary protein • zinc deficiency • pregnancy

¹ A preliminary report of this work was presented at the meeting of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, in Atlantic City, in April 1978; Everett, G. A., Solomon, S. & Apgar, J. (1978) Effect of zinc status on salivary sinc concentrations in the rat. Federation Proc. 37, 889, Abstr. No. 3552.

Manuscript received 31 July 1978.