Title

Salivary MicroRNA profiling in oral potentially malignant disorders

Authors

Tarang K. Mehta¹,*, Manpreet Kaur², Dushyant Pal Singh³, Vinit Kumar Babubhai Patel⁴, Dakshayani Vijay Patil⁵, Parth Ramkumar Shah⁶ & Tanvi Hirani⁷

Affiliation

¹Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology and Oral Microbiology, K M Shah Dental College and Hospital, Sumandeep Vidyapeeth (Deemed to be University), Vadodara, Gujarat, India; ²Department of Dentistry, Wellington Dental, Guelph, Ontario, Canada; ³Department of Dentistry, Government Medical College, Chittorgarh, Rajasthan, India; ⁴Department of Public Health Dentistry, Faculty of Dental Science, Dharmsinh Desai University, Nadiad, Gujarat, India; ⁵Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology, Hazaribag College of Dental Sciences and Hospital, Hazaribag, Jharkhand, India; ⁶Department of Oral Pathology and Microbiology, Goenka Research Institute of Dental Science, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India; ⁷Department of Periodontology and Implantology, Karnavati School of Dentistry, Karnavati University, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India; *Corresponding author
 

Email

Tarang K. Mehta - E-mail: tarangmehta111@gmail.com
Manpreet Kaur - E-mail: smileslifetime@gmail.com
Dushyant Pal Singh - E-mail: dushyantsinghjadoun@gmail.com
Vinit Kumar Babubhai Patel - E-mail: vinitpatel.fods@ddu.ac.in; Phone: +91 7600635585
Dakshayani Vijay Patil - E-mail: drdakshayanipatil@gmail.com; Phone: +91 9113131694
Parth Ramkumar Shah - E-mail: drparthrshah@gmail.com
Tanvi Hirani - E-mail: tanvimehta@karnavatiuniversity.edu.in

Article Type

Research Article

Date

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

Abstract

Oral potentially malignant disorders (OPMDs) are clinically important because of their risk of progression to oral squamous cell carcinoma and early detection of malignant transformation remains difficult. Therefore, it is of interest to evaluate the salivary expression of selected miRNAs in 140 participants comparing patients with OPMDs and healthy controls. Unstimulated saliva samples were analyzed by qRT-PCR for miR-21, miR-31, miR-184 and miR-155 and OPMD patients showed increased oncogenic miRNAs with reduced tumor suppressor miRNA expression compared with controls. Higher expression of miR-21 and miR-31 was significantly associated with epithelial dysplasia severity and tobacco exposure. Thus, we show the salivary miRNA profiling as a promising non-invasive diagnostic adjunct for identifying high-risk OPMDs and monitoring malignant transformation.

Keywords

Saliva, microRNA, oral leukoplakia, oral submucous fibrosis, oral lichen planus, oral cancer, biomarkers, qRT-PCR

Citation

Mehta et al. Bioinformation 22(9): 5999-6003 (2026)

Edited by

Vini Mehta

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.