Comparison of salivary cytokine levels in oral cancer patients and healthy subjects.

In order to find informative salivary biomarkers specific to oral cancer we examined expression of 4 kinds of cytokine in saliva. Levels of interleukins (IL-1beta, -6, -8) and osteopontin were measured by ELISA using whole saliva samples collected from 19 patients with oral cancer (9 men, 10 women; mean age, 60.9 years) and 20 healthy persons (15 men, 5 women; mean age, 32 years). Expression of the 4 cytokines was higher in patients with oral cancer than in healthy controls. The difference was significant in IL-6, in particular. The results suggest that saliva offers a potential target for a screening test aimed at detection of precancerous lesions.