Objective: To identify potential salivary biomarkers for the diagnosis and monitoring of disease progression in oral squamous cell carcinoma and oral leukoplakia.
Materials and methods: An advance search from PubMed and Hindawi was performed with keywords; oral leukoplakia/oral squamous cell carcinoma, salivary biomarker and diagnosis/prognosis. An additional search of articles was done through a manual search from the Google Scholar database.
Results: Twenty studies involving salivary biomarkers as diagnostic tools for oral squamous cell carcinoma and/or oral leukoplakia were identified. A narrative review was carried out.
Conclusion: Single or multiple salivary biomarkers reported by most studies have shown great potential as diagnostic tools for oral squamous cell carcinoma and oral leukoplakia. However, the validation of sensitivity and specificity should be carried out to ensure the accuracy of the biomarkers. Furthermore, a standardised method for saliva collection should be established to prevent variability in the expression of biomarkers.
Keywords: disease management; early diagnosis; oral cancer; oral potentially malignant disorder; salivary biomarker.
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