Serum lipid profile in patients with Oral Cancer

Abstract

Background: This study was conducted to assess the serum lipid profile in patients with oral cancer.

Material and methods: The study included 100 subjects in all. Subjects without any underlying systemic illness, as well as those with oral cancer verified by histopathology, were included in this study. Overweighed subjects as well those older than 65 years were excluded from the study. The subjects were divided into 2 groups of 50 individuals each having oral cancer as well as healthy subjects. Group 1 consisted of 50 subjects without the disease and Group 2 included 50 subjects having the disease. In this study, descriptive statistics were used to draw conclusions. The findings for continuous variables are displayed as mean SD (Min-Max), while those for categorical variables are displayed as a percentage. At the 5% level of significance, the results are considered significant. When comparing study parameters across three or more patient groups, analysis of variance is utilized; when comparing pair wise comparisons, the Post hoc test according to Tukey is used. The significance of categorical research parameters between two or more groups was determined using the 3x3 Fisher exact test. At the 5% level of significance, the results are considered significant.

Results: It was found that the mean plasma triglyceride levels for the control group and the oral cancer group were 178.45 mg/dl and 104.11 mg/dl, respectively. Mean plasma triglyceride levels were found to be lower in the cancerous groups compared to the control group. In the non-cancer group, the mean plasma TC level was 203.56 mg/dl, while in the cancer group, it was 141.77 mg/dl. The plasma TC level is significantly lower in the precancerous and cancerous groups than in the control group.

Conclusion: Serum lipid profile was inversely associated with oral cancer risk. There is some evidence to suggest that a drop in serum lipid levels can be an early sign of alterations taking place in neoplastic cells.

Keywords: cancer, malignancy, oral, lipid profile.