A saliva test for sleepiness
Image credit: nublson via Unsplash
Researchers have identified the first direct saliva biomarkers of sleep deprivation. The 10 biological differences form a distinct “sleepiness fingerprint” that could lead to a rapid test for detecting dangerous fatigue before driving or operating machinery, similar to a breathalyzer for alcohol. Because sleep-deprived people often underestimate how impaired they are, an objective test could provide an important new safety tool for drivers, employers, and transportation industries. Such a tool could help prevent drowsy-driving crashes, which are estimated to cause more than 6,000 deaths annually in the United States.
Source
Scholz, M., et al. (2026). Leveraging the Metabolic Fingerprint of Sleep Deprivation and Sleep Restriction for Forensic Applications: A Machine Learning Study in Oral Fluid Metabolomics. Journal of Proteome Research. DOI: 10.1021/acs.jproteome.5c01064. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jproteome.5c01064
Additional Reading
https://allhealthy.com/sleep-loss-shows-up-somewhere-surprising/
https://neurosciencenews.com/aliva-biomarkers-sleep-deprivation-30880/