Title

Salivary biomarkers in early detection of oral cancer: A clinical research

Authors

Sanjeev Laller¹, Akshay Ashok Katara²,*, Monika Singh³, Kanchan Sonone⁴, Priya Sinha⁵ & Sameer Gupta⁶

Affiliation

¹Department of Dentistry, Miri Piri Institute of Medical Sciences and Research Centre, Shahbad, Kurukshetra, Haryana, India; ²Department of Dentistry, Omni Family Health, USA; ³Department of Dentistry, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, India; ⁴Department of Biochemistry, Smbt Insrc Nashik, Muhs Nashik, Maharashtra, India; ⁵Department of Oral Medicine and Radiology, Geetanjali Dental and Research Institute, Geetanjali University, Udaipur, Rajasthan, India; ⁶Department of Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery, Inderprastha Dental College and Hospital, Sahibabad, Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, India; *Corresponding author

Email

Sanjeev Laller - E-mail: drlallersanjeev@gmail.com
Akshay Katara - E-mail: akshaykatara26@gmail.com
Monika Singh - E-mail: monika1012singh@gmail.com
Kanchan Sonone - E-mail: kanchansonone@gmail.com
Priya Sinha - E-mail: dr.priyasinha02@gmail.com
Sameer Gupta - E-mail: sameer.gupta83@yahoo.in

Article Type

Research Article

Date

Received September 1, 2026; Revised September 30, 2026; Accepted September 30, 2026, Published September 30, 2026

Abstract

Early, non-invasive detection of oral squamous cell carcinoma remains a major clinical challenge. Therefore, it is of interest to evaluate the seven salivary biomarkers in 100 participants across oral cancer, OPMD and healthy groups. All biomarkers increased significantly from healthy controls to OPMD and oral cancer (p < 0.001). IL-6, CD44, defensin-1 and miR-31 showed excellent diagnostic accuracy, with miR-31 best identifying OPMD. Thus, salivary biomarker panels show strong potential for accurate, non invasive early detection of oral cancer.

Keywords

Salivary biomarkers, oral squamous cell carcinoma, oral potentially malignant disorders (OPMD), interleukin-6, interleukin-8, CD44, microRNA-31, salivary cortisol, early detection, ROC curve analysis

Citation

Laller et al. Bioinformation 22(9): 5874-5878 (2026)

Edited by

Ruby Singh

ISSN

0973-2063

Publisher

Biomedical Informatics

License

This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.