A first! A saliva test can reliably identify patients with endometriosis regardless of the patient's age. This disease with variable symptoms and unknown origin affects nearly 10% women from adolescence. A team of French researchers, including gynecologists from the Tenon Hospital in Paris, has focused on micro-RNAs: small fragments of genetic information that modulate the production of cellular proteins. Saliva contains thousands of them enclosed in vesicles, in a form that is stable at room temperature.
To exploit this source of information, researchers have had recourse to several recent technological revolutions. The first is the capacity, now industrial, to extract micro-RNAs by automatons and then to submit them to new generation sequencers that perform thousands of readings at very high throughput in parallel. This expertise was initially provided by specialists from the sequencing platform of the Institut du Cerveau (ICM) at the Pitie Salpetriere hospital (Paris).
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