Salivary testosterone, cortisol, and progesterone: two-week stability, interhormone correlations, and effects of time of day, menstrual cycle, and oral contraceptive use on steroid hormone levels.
Fantastic article written by John Lee, MD. This article is a great review on saliva testing and hormone therapy as it relates to both men and women; even though this article is in reference to men. Worth your time to read
this study found no increase in inflammatory cytokines in those men on androgen deprivation therapy for prostate cancer. The question, is they evaluated testosterone in the serum, so did they really see a decrease in androgens or just a decrease in the transport of androgens. Saliva would have detected a true androgen deficient state.
sex hormones play a role in the gout. It appears that testosterone therapy increases uric acid levels and estradiol decreases uric acid levels. Though, I question this based on the use of serum levels and thus inadequate assessment of aromatase activity. Aromatase activity does not occur in the serum, it occurs in the tissue, thus saliva would be the best tool.
non-SHBG bound serum estradiol, testosterone and DHEA reveal increase breast cancer risk; other studies show saliva testing equal to serum non-bound SHBG hormones
Rugby training resulted in a decrease in T:C salivary ratio through a decline in resting testosterone level. In contrast, competition events increased the T:C ratio primarily through an increase in Cortisol production.
These data demonstrate a high cooperation rate with in-home salivary specimen collection from older adults and good validity of sex hormone measurements