Abstract
We investigated the intraindividual reproducibility of salivary amylase activity （sAA） in 69 female subjects. They included 15 elderly women with dementia （mean age＝86.7±4.8 years）, 23 elderly women without dementia （mean age＝79.7±5.0 years）, and 31 healthy young adult women （mean age＝23.1±4.5 years）. Dementia was assessed by the Hasegawa Dementia Scale-Revised （HDS-R）. Mean HDS-R scores for the elderly with dementia and those without were 11.1 and 27.4, respectively. A hand-held salivary amylase monitor （NIPRO model CM-2.1） was used for all sAA measurements. Each subject was measured twice at 15 : 00. Before measurements, the participants gargled with water and rested quietly for 10 min. Values of sAA were logarithmically transformed for statistical analysis. Reproducibility between two measurements was examined using an intraclass correlation coefficient （ICC）. Means of the logarithmically transformed sAA measurements for these three study groups were 1.64, 1.46, and 1.61, respectively. Differences in mean sAA among the three groups were not statistically significant. ICCs for the elderly with dementia, the elderly without dementia, and the young adults were 0.83, 0.61, and 0.80, respectively. These results suggest that sAA measurement by a hand-held monitor is sufficiently reliable, even for elderly patients with dementia.
