Smoking and Oral Cancer: Is Still There a Relationship?

Objectives: The present cross sectional comparative study attempted to investigate the susceptibility to oral cancer among Egyptian male smokers using epidermal growth factor as biomarker to detect the existence of any relationship between smoking and oral cancer
Methods: A total sample of 150 archival cases were collected from the departments of Maxillofacial, faculty of Dentistry, and Head and Neck surgery , Faculty of Medicine, University of Alexandria. All lesions collected were male, over 40 years old and smokers. They were equally divided into 3 groups; 50 had oral squamous cell carcinoma, 50 showed varying degrees of dysplastic changes and 50 were normal control. All lesions were subjected to EGFR antibody.(Cat. #MS-378, Thermo Fisher Scientific Fremont, CA 94538, US) according to the manufacturer’s instructions
Results: positive immunohistochemical reaction was detected in all cases of SCC and in 20% of those who had dysplastic changes with different degrees of intensity whereas nothing was revealed among the study control group
Conclusions: These findings ascertain the multi-factorial nature of SCC recommending further investigations for better detection and control.