Pyruvic acid levels in serum and saliva: A new course for oral cancer screening?

OBJECTIVE: Cancerous cells show increased glycolysis rate. This will increase overall levels of pyruvate as it is one of the end products of glycolysis. The present on-going study is to estimate the levels of pyruvate in saliva and serum among healthy and oral cancer subjects. SETTINGS AND DESIGN: Hospital-based cross-sectional comparative study. METHODOLOGY: A total of 50 subjects among healthy and oral cancer subjects were selected based on clinical and histological criteria. Saliva and serum samples were collected and subjected to pyruvate level estimation using biochemical analysis. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS: Descriptive analysis and Mann-Whitney test were used to find the statistical difference between the two independent groups. RESULTS: Serum pyruvic acid levels of the healthy group were 1.09 ± 0.14 and for oral cancer, it was 2.95 ± 0.59 and salivary level were 3.49 ± 0.47 and 1.32 ± 0.10 respectively. Mann-Whitney test showed statistically significant difference in serum and salivary pyruvate level in between two groups (P < 0.000 respectively). CONCLUSION: The present study showed noticeable variation in the level of pyruvic acid among healthy and oral cancer subjects. This generates the hypothesis that estimation of the pyruvic acid can be a new tool to screening of the cancer.