This is an invited editorial to comment on the original article by Vasaghi-Gharamaleki et al. [
1] published elsewhere in this issue. There are several components to that study that need attention—choice and validation of biomarkers in plasma/saliva in systemic disease like coronary artery disease (CAD), normal response to surgically induced stress, timing and duration of the exercise study, clinical profile of the CAD and risk assessment.
The editorial gives a brief background of the translational medicine/technology that developed as an offshoot of the Human Genome Project and includes a variety of Omics studies, of which salivaomics is one. Further, from the literature analysed, it would be clear that the study design, absence of data for clinical risk assessment, study of limited number of salivary biomarkers without parallel study of serum biomarkers and study restricted to 8 weeks in the presence of anthropometric data suggesting that the normal surgical stress response is ongoing—all point to major deficiencies and no valid conclusions can be drawn from the study.