ABSTRACT
Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is one of the most debilitating cancers in the world and while its causes have been heavily researched, the outcome remains grim. Most of these cancers are identified in the late stage and as a result treatment options are limited. Therefore, researchers have focused their efforts on recognizing and identifying dysplastic tissue that has an increased chance of progressing to cancer. Research has begun to look at cell cycle dysfunctions and in particular, aberrant protein functions as a way of identifying the cellular mechanism at fault. The overexpression of a group of regulatory proteins called cyclins has been demonstrated in many types of dysplasia and carcinomas. Although researchers have identified several different types of cyclins as potential culprits, we chose to focus our study primarily on the overexpression of cyclin A. While most research on oral dysplasia and OSCC has been focused on cyclin D, studies have been done on cyclin A. While the etiology of oral dysplasia/SCC appears to be multifactorial, we chose to compare our results with those of similar studies performed across the globe. The social factors, such as the increased use of tobacco that may have contributed to our results, were compared with similar studies performed in Europe and Asia. While our results were remarkably similar and demonstrated a link between the overexpression of cyclin A in oral dysplasia, there exists some differences and thus may require a multicenter, longitudinal study.