RESUMO
Objective: To assess the prognostic potential for N-cadherin in oral squamous cell carcinoma and oral epithelial dysplasia
Study Design: A cross-sectional study, analytical study
Place and Duration of Study: Maharishi Markandeshwar College of Dental Science Research [MMCDSR], Ambala, India, from 2011 to 2014
Methodology: Immunohistochemistry was used to observe the N-cadherin expression in 100 cases having epithelium with normal oral mucosa, oral epithelial dysplastic lesions and oral squamous cell carcinoma [OSCC]. For statistical significance, SPSS 13.0 was used to calculate the data by Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests
Results: In OSCC, N-cadherin expression was more evident than in oral epithelial dysplasia followed by the normal oral epithelium that did not show any dysplastic changes [p=0.001]. Conversely, N-cadherin expression was not significant among the histological grade of OSCC
Conclusion: N-cadherin can be used as a potential biomarker for early diagnosis of OSCC. However, the N-cadherin expression did not show any correlation with the histological grade of OSCC