Abstract
OBJECTIVE: Evaluation and correlation of 17β-Estradiol(E2) in blood and Estrogen Receptor α (ERα) and Estrogen Receptor β(ER β) in tissue of four groups divided as normal control subjects (group I), active control subjects (group II), premalignant(leukoplakia) (group III) and OSCC patients (Group IV). METHODS: Subjects were divided in four groups mentioned previously and evaluated individually for 17β-estradiol(E2) in blood and ERα & ER β in tissue. The blood samples were evaluated by chemiluminescence assay and tissues samples were evaluated by Real-Time PCR for tissue analysis. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was applied for quantitative evaluation of variables in each group followed by TukeyB test. Pearson Correlation Coefficient was used to study the correlation between the variables. Survival analysis was calculated by Kaplan-Meier Survival Analysis. RESULTS: The results are indicative of statistically significant increased levels of E2 in the 4 groups by analysis of variance (p value-0.0327) followed by TukeyB test with statistically significant difference between Group VI and I (sig value-0.008) and Group VI and II (sig value-0.029). The Pearson correlation coefficient demonstrated that the mean levels of Estradiol are positively correlated with mean levels of ER α (p value- 0.030). Results did not indicate an association between survival and expression of E2, ER α and ER β. CONCLUSION: The levels of E2 can be used as a marker in predicting the progression of disease from normal tissue not exposed to tobacco to normal tissue exposed to tobacco to premalignant to OSCC. The ERα in tissue is positively correlated with the increased levels of E2 in serum, so ERα expression in tissue along with E2 in serum could be used to identify the subsets of patients with higher risk of developing OSCC, especially those subjects with established tobacco habit but no appreciable change in oral mucosa.