THE AMOUNTS OF FOLIC ACID AND VITAMIN B₆ IN SALIVA

¹ The Walter G. Zoller Memorial Dental Clinic and the Department of Bacteriology and Parasitology, University of Chicago, Chicago, Ill.

Microbiologic assays of the saliva content of folic acid and of vitamin B₆, including substances with folic acid-like or vitamin B₆-like activity that stimulate growth of oral lactobacilli gave the following results:

For folic acid, analyses of fifty-one saliva samples from twenty persons, mostly young adults chosen without regard to their caries experience, gave an average figure of 0.024 µg per milliliter. The extreme range was 0.003 to 0.075, with 70 per cent of the values falling between 0.008 and 0.039 µg per milliliter.

For vitamin B₆, using pyridoxal hydrochloride as the standard, analyses of fifty-two saliva samples from seventeen persons in the same category as above, gave the average figure of 0.006 µg per milliliter. The extreme range was 0.001 to 0.017, with 75 per cent of the values falling between 0.003 and 0.012 µg per milliliter.

The relationship of these values to possible growth and acid production of oral lactobacilli has been discussed.