Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is the sixth most common human malignancy. According to World Health Organization, oral cancer has been reported to have the highest morbidity and mortality and a survival rate of approximately 50 % at 5 years from diagnosis. This is attributed to the subjectivity in TNM staging and histological grading which may result in less than optimum treatment outcomes including tumour recurrence. One of the hallmarks of cancer is aerobic glycolysis also known as the Warburg effect. This glycolytic phenotype (hypoxic state) not only confers immortality to cancer cells, but also correlates with the belligerent behaviour of various malignancies and is reflected as an increase in the expression of lactate dehydrogenase 5 (LDH-5), the main isoform of LDH catalysing the conversion of pyruvate to lactate during glycolysis. The diagnostic role of salivary LDH in assessing the metabolic phenotype of oral cancer has not been studied. Since salivary LDH is mainly sourced from oral epithelial cells, any pathological changes in the epithelium should reflect diagnostically in saliva. Thus in our current research, we made an attempt to ascertain the biological behaviour and aggressiveness of OSCC by appraising its metabolic phenotype as indirectly reflected in salivary LDH activity. We found that salivary LDH can be used to assess the aggressiveness of different histological grades of OSCC. For the first time, an evidence of differing metabolic behaviour in similar histologic tumour grade is presented. Taken together, our study examines the inclusion of salivary LDH as potential diagnostic parameter and therapeutic index in OSCC.
Keywords: Aggressiveness; Cancer; Glycolysis; Lactate dehydrogenase; Saliva.