With the growth of genome wide association studies (GWAS) and their need for DNA from many thousands of people, the time seemed right for us to highlight how DNA from saliva enables GWAS. DNA from saliva is allowing more researchers to achieve their recruitment numbers for GWAS studies while providing results that are equivalent to blood on downstream assays. Saliva is a highly accessible body fluid that is easy to collect when collected with Oragene. Since the launch of the Oragene product in 2004, there have been many published research studies that have shown this to be true. Recently, Bahlo et al of the Australian and New Zealand Multiple Sclerosis Genetics Consortium (ANZgene) published a paper that showcased how DNA from saliva performed on the Illumina Infinium Hap370CNV DUO microarray^[1] and highlighted why it is ideal for GWAS.

Here are 3 reasons why DNA from saliva is ideal for GWAS

1. Increased compliance: 95% compliance rate was achieved with the Oragene saliva samples that were mailed to self-identified multiple sclerosis (MS) cases;
2. High-quality DNA: In paired blood and saliva samples, there was no significant difference in call rates between blood and saliva DNA for the complete set of SNPs (353,203 SNPs);
3. Proven performance: All Oragene saliva samples satisfied the call rate threshold  and Oragene saliva samples were much less likely than blood-derived DNA to fail the QC threshold in the study.

The researchers conclude that the Oragene self-collection kit enables self-collection of samples resulting in very high compliance rates while providing results that are as good as blood-derived DNA for GWAS.