Teresa Sequeira1,2*, Gonçalo Sousa1, Eurico Monteiro1,3 and Augusta Silveira1,2
1Fernando Pessoa University – Health Sciences Faculty, Porto, Portugal
2Center for Health Studies and Research of the University of Coimbra and Center for Innovation in Biomedicine and Biotechnology, Coimbra, Portugal
3Portuguese Oncology Institute - Porto, Portugal
*Corresponding Author: Teresa Sequeira, Associate Professor, Researcher, Fernando Pessoa University – Health Sciences Faculty (UFP-FCS), Portugal.
Received: October 22, 2020; Published: November 30, 2020
Oral cancer is considered to be a growing public health problem and within head and neck cancer pathology, it is the most common. It is the 6th most common cancer in the world, corresponding to approximately 3% of all cancers.
Despite the dedication and investment in this pathology, the advances in diagnosis strategies and the development of early intervention programs and treatments, aimed to be more targeted, more effective and less aggressive, the global survival rate after 5 years has remained worldwide at approximately 50% over the last three decades. The evaluation of Quality of Life stands out in this context as a key indicator, along with survival.
We aim to review oral cancer etiology and discuss inflammation role in oral oncogenesis, considering its potential to modulate and amplify the impact of known risk factors. Additionally, we point out inflammation as predictive of poor prognosis in patients with oral cancer or at risk of developing it.
Articles were collected from the PubMed, Bon, Elsevier, Science Direct databases, considering mainly the last 5 years of publication (2015 to 2020). The indexing terms used were "oral oncology and risk factors", "oral oncology and epidemiology" and "inflammation and oncogenesis".
The role of the immune system and inflammation in the initiation, promotion and progression of oncologic pathology of the oral cavity has deserved maximum attention from the scientific community. It is clear that the presence of pro-inflammatory factors associated with immunosuppression are closely related to oral oncogenesis and poor prognosis. The chronic inflammation can contribute to modulate and amplify risk factors actions.
Chronic inflammatory pathology and microbioma of the oral cavity have relevance in oral oncology and can be used as biomarkers, signaling patients at higher risk. There is a whole potential knowledge that can contribute to a better understanding of oral oncogenesis and therefore making it easier both to identify individuals at risk and to achieve more targeted and focused treatment strategies for each cancer patient.
Keywords: Oral Cancer; Risk Factors; Etiology; Quality of Life; Inflammation; Prognosis
Citation: Teresa Sequeira., et al. “Inflammatory Pathology of the Oral Cavity: Relevance in Oral Oncogenesis". Acta Scientific Dental Sciences 4.12 (2020): 120-129.
Copyright: © 2020 Teresa Sequeira., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
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