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Background: COVID-19 is a disease affecting various human organs and systems, in which the virus seeks to interact with angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 receptors. These receptors are present in the oral cavity, but the direct relationship between such an interaction and possible oral manifestations of COVID-19 is still unclear., Aim: The present study evaluated oral manifestations in a cohort of COVID-19 patients during the period of hospitalisation., Methods: In total, 154 patients presenting moderate-to-severe forms of COVID-19 had their oral mucosa examined twice a week until the final outcome, either discharge or death. The oral alterations observed in the patients were grouped into Group 1 (pre-existing conditions and opportunistic oral lesions) and Group 2 (oral mucosal changes related to hospitalization)., Results: Oral lesions found in the patients of Group 1 are not suggestive of SARS-CoV-2 infection as they are mainly caused by opportunistic infections. On the other hand, oral alterations found in the patients of Group 2 were statistically ( P < 0.001) related to intubation and longer period of hospitalisation., Conclusion: It is unlikely that ulcerative lesions in the oral cavity are a direct manifestation of SARS-CoV-2 or a marker of COVID-19 progression., Competing Interests: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors., (© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.)

Background: The SARS-CoV-2 infections are still imposing a great public health challenge despite the recent developments in vaccines and therapy. Searching for diagnostic and prognostic methods that are fast, low-cost and accurate are essential for disease control and patient recovery. The MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry technique is rapid, low cost and accurate when compared to other MS methods, thus its use is already reported in the literature for various applications, including microorganism identification, diagnosis and prognosis of diseases., Methods: Here we developed a prognostic method for COVID-19 using the proteomic profile of saliva samples submitted to MALDI-TOF and machine learning algorithms to train models for COVID-19 severity assessment., Results: We achieved an accuracy of 88.5%, specificity of 85% and sensitivity of 91.5% for classification between mild/moderate and severe conditions. When we tested the model performance in an independent dataset, we achieved an accuracy, sensitivity and specificity of 67.18, 52.17 and 75.60% respectively., Conclusion: Saliva is already reported to have high inter-sample variation; however, our results demonstrates that this approach has the potential to be a prognostic method for COVID-19. Additionally, the technology used is already available in several clinics, facilitating the implementation of the method. Further investigation using a larger dataset is necessary to consolidate the technique., Competing Interests: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s)., (© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.)

Background: Several reports have proposed that the viral load of torque teno virus (TTV) in plasma is a biomarker of immune function in solid organ transplantation (SOT) and in allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Additionally, for the latter one, TTV-DNA quantification in saliva has also been suggested., Aim: to investigate the correlation between the TTV viral load and immune function in paired saliva and plasma samples in patients on kidney transplantation., Materials and Methods: TTV-DNA viral load was quantified in paired samples of saliva and plasma from 71 patients before and a short-time after renal-transplantation by real-time PCR., Results: The data obtained from 213 paired samples showed a slight consistency in the comparison between saliva and plasma, with prevalence of TTV-DNA being 58%, 52% and 60% in saliva samples and 60%, 73% and 90% in plasma samples before and at 15-20 and 45-60 days after transplantation, respectively. Additionally, a high TTV viral load was observed in plasma at 15-20 and 45-60 days after transplantation compared to that observed in saliva at the same time., Conclusions: Overall, monitoring TTV-DNA in saliva samples could be an additional fast non-invasive option to assess the immune functionality in SOT populations., Competing Interests: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s)., (© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.)