SALIVARY EGFR AS BIOMARKER FOR ORAL CANCER & PRE-CANCER :A CASE CONTROL STUDY

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.