Researchers have identified all the proteins in human saliva, a move which could provide a new tool for diagnosing fatal diseases. Patients may soon need to just spit into a cup in order to get diagnosed for illnesses such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes. Researchers believe that a saliva test will do away with the trauma of having to draw blood from the patients.

It will also make disease diagnosis and treatment monitoring cheaper and less invasive. "Our work, and the work of our partners, has shown that salivary proteins may represent new tools for tracking disease throughout the body, tools that are potentially easier to monitor in saliva than in blood," said author James Melvin, director of the Centre for Oral Biology at the University of Rochester Medical Centre.

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