Abstract :
Oral cancer is one of the leading cause of cancer in India, new diagnostic
modalities for early diagnosis and treatment will increase the survival of the
patients. The present study was carried out with an aim to evaluate salivary
levels of EGFR in oral cancer and pre-cancer as tumor marker. For this
purpose an observational case-control study was carried out in which a total
of 72 subjects were enrolled.Of these 24 (33.3%) were patients of
premalignant oral lesions and 24 (33.3%) were patients of malignant oral
lesions& 24 (33.3%) subjects were normal healthy controls. Demographic
information and clinical data was obtained, estimation for EGFR was
performed in saliva. In premalignant cases, buccal mucosa was the most
common site involved (87.50%) whereas in malignant cases tongue was the
most common site involved (n=10;41.67%). Mean salivary EGFR levels
were higher in malignant cases (0.23±0.17 pg/ml) and low in controls (0.10±0.19 pg/ml). Mean EGFR levels in
premalignant cases were 0.12±0.22 pg/ml. statistically, this difference was not significant (p=0.052). Statistically, no
significant difference in mean EGFR levels among different TNM stages could be seen (p=0.145). EGFR levels
showed a potential to discriminate between malignant and premalignanat cases but this difference was statistical
insignificant due to lower sample size.
Keyword :
Epidermal Growth Factor, Squamous Cell Carcinoma, Salivary Biomarker.