The Efficacy of Curcumin as Chemoprevention Agent for Oral Cancer

Objectives: Curcumin’s chemoprevention potential has been one of the subjects of cancer research for the last decade due to its alleged effect on reactive oxygen species (ROS) production. As for Heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1), this rate-limiting enzyme has been known for its high expression and association in human and murine cancer. Therefore, the objective of the current study was to investigate the efficacy of curcumin as chemoprevention agent on oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) by evaluating the expression of HO-1.

Methods: The current study was conducted by using 33 healthy-research complied Sprague Dawley rats that was randomly divided into two groups. The first group (16 rats) was the control group, which was the group with no intervention, whilst the second group (17 rats) was the experimental group that received curcumin as chemoprevention agent for OSCC for as much as 80 mg/kg of body weight for 5 consecutive weeks. Epithelial dysplasia in OSCC was induced by applying 100 mg of 7,12-dimethylbenz(a)anthracene (DMBA) 0.5%. An immunohistochemistry examination for the expression of HO-1 was performed by using Labeled Streptavidin Biotin (LSAB) immunoperoxide complex. All gained data were then analyzed by using Mann-Whitney test.

Results: It was revealed that out 17 rats in the experimental group, one (6%) rats showed HO-1 Histoscore (H-score) of 9-12 (highly expressed), twelve (71%) rats showed a score of 4-8 (fairly expressed), and four (33%) rats showed a score of 3 (poorly expressed). A Mann-Whitney test showed no significant difference (p=0.09) was found between the control group and experimental group.

Conclusions: In the current study, despite of the potential, the efficacy of curcumin as a chemoprevention agent for oral squamous cell carcinoma was not significantly proven. Therefore, further study is needed.