Biochemia Medica, Vol. 27 No. 3, 2017.
Review article
https://doi.org/10.11613/BM.2017.030503
Insights into cerumen and application in diagnostics: past, present and future prospective
Engy Shokry
; Laboratório de Métodos de Extração e Separação, Instituto de Química, Universidade Federal de Goiás, Goiânia, Brazil
Nelson Roberto Antoniosi Filho
; Laboratório de Métodos de Extração e Separação, Instituto de Química, Universidade Federal de Goiás, Goiânia, Brazil
Abstract
Cerumen or earwax is an emerging bio-fluid in clinical diagnosis that has been very little exploited during the past decades in spite of its high diagnostic
potential. It is highly abundant in diagnostic biomarkers such as genetic material, lipids, proteins, chemical elements, internal and external
metabolites (e.g. hormones, volatile organic compounds, amino acids, xenobiotics etc.) reaching earwax from the blood circulation. Thus, it is able
to reflect not only physiology, pathophysiology of the human body but can also detect recent and long term exposure to environmental pollutants,
without the need of invasive blood tests and in the same time overcoming many disadvantages faced by using other diagnostic biological fluids.
This review discusses the biology, functions, chemistry of earwax, past and current approaches for the study of its chemical composition, emphasizing how a detected variation in its composition can offer information of high clinical value, which can be useful in diagnosis of many diseases such
as metabolic disorders and tumours as well as in forensic applications. It also presents details about techniques of sample collection, storage, and analysis. Moreover, it highlights concerns about the use of earwax for diagnostic purposes, which should be addressed to make earwax diagnostics
a reality in the future.
Keywords
cerumen; laboratory diagnosis; metabolomics; proteomics; genomics
Hrčak ID:
187583
URI
Publication date:
15.10.2017.
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