Salivary Cytokine Profile as Biomarker for Dental Pain in Children With Cerebral Palsy - An Exploratory Study

The sample with CP will be selected from individuals attending the dental clinics of the Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz Humanitarian city (SBAHC). The control patients will be selected from the dental clinics of the Riyadh Colleges of Dentistry and Pharmacy and be matched to the CP patients for age, gender and extent of dental problems. The sample will comprise of 20 patients with CP and 20 verbal controls.The oral health of all children will be recorded using WHO examination criteria .The teeth will be examined using WHO category II criteria - clinical examination with lighting and without radiographs.aliva will be collected from the children using the passive drool method and stored in sterile plastics collection tubes. The collected sample will be stored at -600C until they can be analyzed. The cytokine profile of the saliva sample will be analyzed using an ELISA kit for total cytokine profile (Luminex Performance Human Cytokine Panel A, LUH000, R&D systems) to measure cytokines IL-1 alpha, IL-1 beta, IL-8, and TNF-alpha. The pain perception of the verbal control group will be recorded using the validated Arabic version of the short form of the McGill Pain Questionnaire. The children will also indicate the extent of the pain using the Wong Baker Faces ™ pain perception scale.Normality of the total cytokine levels will be tested using the Shapiro-Wilkes Test. The Mann Whiney U test will be used to compare the cytokine profile the CP and control group. The spearman correlation will be used to explore the relationship between the reported pain and cytokine profile levels. If found to be significant an initial cytokine-pain map will be proposed.