Expression of Salivary HIF-1α Levels Among the Clinical Stages of Oral Submucous Fibrosis

Abstract

Background: Oral Submucous Fibrosis (OSMF) is defined as severe submucosal fibrosis and decreased vascularity, resulting in a compromised blood supply leading to hypoxia of tissues. The key biomarker involved is Hypoxia Inducible Factor-1α (HIF-1α). The objective of this research was to analyze the expression of HIF-1α in saliva samples of individuals across the clinical stages of OSMF and healthy controls.

Methods: This case-control study consisted of 120 participants, 60 patients had different clinical stages of OSMF and 60 healthy controls. Samples of saliva were collected and quantification of salivary samples was done using ELISA. Kolmogorov-Smirnov test assessed data normality. Kruskal Wallis test was applied to assess the association between salivary HIF-1α levels and clinical stages of OSMF. The Kendall Tau correlation test was used to assess the relationship between different stages of OSMF and salivary HIF-1α levels.

Results: The comparison of HIF-1α expression in different stages of OSMF and healthy controls was done. In comparison, it was found that HIF-1α expression increased significantly (p=0.00) in patients than controls. The expression was increased with stages, stage I (16.84 ± 9.74), stage II (19.51 ± 7.99), stage III (24.43 ± 7.49), and stage IV (28.92 ± 5.12), respectively. The odd ratio indicates for every progressive stage, the odds for high salivary HIF-1α levels increase by 1.63 times.

Conclusion: Levels of salivary HIF-1α showed increased expression with the progressive stages of OSMF. This variation in the levels of salivary HIF-1α suggests its possible role as an early non-invasive detective marker in the assessment of disease progression.