Research Article Open Access

Role of Salivary Zinc in Oral Leukoplakia – A Biochemical Study

Abstract

Salivary analysis, a non-invasive alternative to serum analysis, is an effective modality for diagnosis and for prognosis prediction of various diseases like oral cancer and even oral potentially malignant disorders. The aim of this study was to evaluate the level of zinc (Zn) in saliva of patients with oral leukoplakia (OL) and to compare the values with healthy controls. The study group comprised of 25 clinically diagnosed and histopathologically confirmed cases of OL and 25 age- and sex-matched controls. The data were assessed statistically using SPSS version 17. Among 50% patients with OL, only 4% of patients showed speckled leukoplakia and the remaining 46% revealed homogeneous leukoplakia. The mean Zn level differed significantly (p<0.05) between the OL patients and the controls with patients exhibiting lower Zn (116.96±38.73) levels in contrast to controls who presented higher Zn (146.76±29.18). In conclusion, evaluation of salivary Zn may be used as a potential diagnostic tool in OL patients. Further research is needed in this line in patients with oral potential malignant disorders with higher sample size in order to correlate habit and diet pattern which may affect the Zn status.

Sham Kishor Kanneppady , Anusha Bhaskar , Prasanna Kumar Rao , Anusha Rangare Lakshman , Ankur Barua , Sowmya Sham Kanneppady

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