Evaluation of the salivary Zinc Finger Protein 510 in Patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) and Healthy Individuals as a new biomarker for diagnosis of OSCC in Early Stages

Aims: Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is the most frequent malignancy in the oral cavity. Early diagnosis of OSCC could provide on-time treatments and increase survival rate of patients. Recently, the level of salivary biomarkers has been studied as a mean for the early diagnosis of different cancers. This study assessed salivary zinc finger protein 510 in patients with OSCC and healthy individuals as a new biomarker for the diagnosis of OSCC in early stages.   Materials & Methods: In this study, 21 OSCC, and 21 healthy individuals were selected in 2019 and their unstimulated saliva were collected by spitting method.  Salivary zinc finger protein 510 were determined using the ELISA technique. All calculations were performed using the SPSS software ver 23. The significance level was set at ≤ 0.05 for all tests. Findings:In this study mean of Salivary zinc finger 510 protein of OSCC patients were significantly higher than healthy subjects (p=0/019). But after considering age as a confounder variable, although ZNF510 level was higher in the patient group than the healthy group, the difference was not valuable (p=0.090). In addition, in the patients with OSCC, the mean of ZNF510 in patients with grade II lesion was significantly higher than those in grade I (P = 0.001). Conclusion: In this study, after considering the age, although the mean of ZNF510 in the patient with OSCC was higher than the healthy group, but no significant difference was observed. Therefore, although in this study, age had a direct and weak relationship with the mean of ZNF510, but it can be stated that there is an age-related effect on ZNF510 secretion in saliva. Therefore, additional studies with age consideration, and higher sample size are recommended.