Drop Date: November 2008

In This Drop: Welcome to the First Issue of The Spit Report

We are pleased that you have subscribed to our electronic newsletter, and we hope that you find it to be useful and informative. Naturally, we would like you to look over the news from our company to see the new products and services that we are introducing as we grow. Equally important, however, we also want to offer information that will help you stay in touch with developments in saliva research and possibly help you in your own work. We would be happy if this newsletter begins to serve as an informal forum for saliva news, and we hope that researchers from outside our company will consider submitting brief reports that would be of general interest to our readers.

This Just In…

New Website
We hope you will visit our completely redesigned website at http://www.salimetrics.com/. We’re still working on certain sections, and we hope to have the final version up and running soon.

New Assay Kits
As part of our plan to offer more immune markers in our product line, we have released a new kit to measure Salivary C-Reactive Protein (CRP). A kit for IL-6 is currently under development, and further markers will be chosen based on customer interest. For some background on the importance of CRP measurement read our article An Introduction to CRP.

In response to customer demand we have also added a new kit for the steroid hormone Dehydroepiandrosterone Sulfate (DHEA-S), which will be offered along with our existing kit for DHEA. For a discussion of the two closely related substances see our article DHEA and DHEA-S: An Introduction to Their Function and Measurement.

Workshops
As a service to the scientific community Salimetrics is conducting a series of Spit Camp U.S. workshops in our facility in State College, Pennsylvania. These low-cost training sessions will focus on the measurement of salivary analytes and integration of salivary measures into behavioral, social, and health sciences. These workshops are intended for investigators who need more information about salivary testing in order to properly design and carry out their research projects. They are not intended for lab technicians who want training to be able to perform the assays. (Technician training and help setting up a new lab is available, however, by special arrangement.)

The first Spit Camp was held on October 3-4, 2008. Six researchers met with Dr. Douglas Granger for a mixture of lectures, discussions, and personal sessions, and they also participated with laboratory personnel in the collection of saliva and the running of assay kits. Afterwards, they commented that the knowledge gained during the workshop was very valuable and that they felt ready to incorporate salivary testing into their own studies.

The second Spit Camp U.S. session was just held November 7-8, and additional sessions are being planned for February, March, and May of 2009. For exact dates and additional information please visit our website.