Effect of Betel Nut Chewing in Conjunction with Tobacco Addiction on Distribution of Upper Aero Digestive Tract Tumors

Anumber of risk factors such as tobacco, human papilloma virus, areca nut, alcohol have been termed in the literature as causative agents for head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC).Areca nut, when mixed with tobacco products or wrapped in the leaf of the piper betel plant, named as betel nut. Areca nut chewing is associated with acute as well as chronic effects. The acute effects are worsening of asthma, low blood pressure, and rapid heart rate while chronic effects comprise dependency, oral submucosal fibrosis (OSF), precancerous oral lesions and HNSCC. Betel-quid chewing is quite widespread and has achieved anamount of social acceptance in India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, New Guinea, Taiwan and China. This has been amalgamated into several of the religious and cultural rituals of ethnic groups within the Indian sub-continent. Though many studies concluded that the regular chewing of betel-quid containing tobacco was carcinogenic in humans, there was inadequate evidence to demonstrate that this was also true of chewing betel-quid without tobacco.The present study shows that cases that use betel nut in addition to other tobacco productsdevelop carcinoma of buccal mucosa as comparison to those who use tobacco products without betel nut at higher probability.