Establishment and application of enzyme immunoassay for saliva cortisol in Taiwanese context

Saliva steroid assay is an upcoming area of research, with much potential for growth and progress. Expensive, varying results with commercial kits and the disadvantages of radioimmunoassay have forced researchers to develop their own system of enzyme immunoassay (EIA). A modification from our established EIA system was used to develop a saliva cortisol (F) assay system. The system sensitivity (> 90pg/mL) was checked by various experiments, including comparison of data with a commercial kit obtained from Salimetrics (R). The assay system was employed to investigate the saliva F level in a young Taiwanese population, and compared with the total and free serum levels of F.