Ferum level estimation in saliva - (Oct/09/2012 )

Hi,

(I am a bit confused, if it is a good place for this topic, if no, sory and thank for replacement )


I am a studen of Dental Faculty, during preparation for scientific project it turned out, that estimation of ferum level is saliva taken from several patients would be very interesting. Unfortunately i can not find any "available for university students" method of this procedure. Biochemical faculty promised to help us in reagents and laboratory work, but still we have no good method of evaluation. Can you suggest us good method for estimation of ferum level in saliva? Any information/previous studies/methods will be very helpful

Not quite sure what exactly ferum is, could you explain more? My best guess is that it is Iron (Fe) or perhaps pheromone (excreted hormone)?

Sorry fot this misunderstanding, it's probably because constant language changes of mine (study, live, research project) Of course I mean Iron (Fe).
To be more precise: we are willing to better understand or to find a cause of very rare "pigmented plaque" on children's teeth. We suspect, that it may be partly caused by increased amount of Iron in their saliva. That's why we need to know their level and compare it with control patients. That's why I'm asking about laboratory method (reagents, procedure) which we can suggest to our biochemical department
I hope now it's a bit more clear

Cool - no worries with the language, we get lots of different people on here, so we do our best to understand and realise that not everyone speaks/writes perfect english.

You might be better off asking an analytical chemist how best to estimate iron content in a sample. I suspect that something like mass-spec flame atomic absorption spectroscopy will be the most accurate method.

I'm sure, that "mass-spec flame atomic absorption spectroscopy" will be very acurate, but I'm also sure, that unfortunately it's totaly out of reach. We need to stick to the basic methods, I hope in future I will have possibility to work with "modern techniques" That's why I'm asking about biochemical, I think less complicated and easier to perform methods in random laboratory.

- ICP
- AAS
- Ferrozine method, colorimetric and very commonly used allows discrimination between Fe(II) and Fe(III)
- Phenantroline method, also colorimetric

ICP and AAS are quite simpler as there is no problem redisolving the plaque, but for ferrozine you will probably have to disolve and neutralize to avoid problems with very extreme pH.

For both colorimetric methods you need the reactive and a spectrophotometer. For ferrozine you will also need ascorbic acid (I think it was ascorbic ) to reduce Fe(III) to Fe(II) and measure total Fe because ferrozine only binds to ferrous iron. I just did a couple of times but the method is easy to find online.

here are some papers with methods: