Assessment of salivary levels of ErbB2 in oral squamous cell carcinoma

Abstract

Introduction: Oral cancer is the sixth-most common cancer globally. The survival rate of oral cancer is 5 years, depending on the stage it is diagnosed. To diagnose in the early stage, specialised tumour markers may assist and also help in improving the survival rate of oral cancer. ErbB2 is a transmembrane cell surface receptor required in signal transduction and an essential part of signalling pathways that take part in controlling the basic cellular processes like cell cycle, migration, metabolism and survival, besides cellular proliferation and differentiation. It is over-expressed in oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) and is directly proportional to the poor prognosis, as it is expressed at a very low concentration in a healthy individual. Due to this, ErbB2 could be used as a diagnostic marker in OSCC. Nowadays, the search for tumour expression in the saliva with the use of salivary biomarkers could aid in the diagnosis of the OSSC. Aim and Objectives: To assess the expression of ErbB2 in the saliva of patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma by correlating the ErbB2 level in the disease group with the healthy group. To determine the diagnostic significance of ErbB2 in OSCC. Materials and Methods: The study comprises 20 salivary samples from OSCC patients and 20 salivary samples from healthy individuals. The salivary level of ErbB2 was estimated using Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay. To analyse the data, SPSS (IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 26.0, Armonk, NY: IBM Corp. Released 2019) is used. The significance level is fixed at 5% (α = 0.05). P value <0.05 is considered to be statistically significant. To compare the mean values of mean and concentration, an unpaired/independent sample t-test was used. Results: The mean age of OSCC and control were found to be 57 ± 8.13 and 26.6 ± 1.51, respectively. The mean age was compared between OSCC and control by the Chi-square test, and the P value was <0.01, which was found to be statistically significant. The salivary levels of ErbB2 in the OSCC and control groups were measured by an unpaired sample t-test. The mean salivary ErbB2 level in the OSCC group is 3.20 ng/ml ± 0.57, and in the control group, it is 2.43 ng/ml ± 0.13. When a pairwise comparison of ErbB2 concentration was performed between OSCC and control, it showed a statistically significant difference with a P value of 0.007, which is P < 0.05. Conclusion: The present study has demonstrated an increased salivary expression of ErbB2 in OSCC patients when compared to healthy individuals. This suggests that ErbB2 could aid in the diagnosis of OSCC and could be used as a diagnostic marker in the early detection of oral cancer, a finding that has to be further established with a larger sample size.