Abstract:
Saliva collection is non-invasive, easy, non-stressful and reduces animal transportation. Therefore, the saliva is a good source for cancer biomarkers. In human, saliva transferrin is correlated with stages of oral squamous cell carcinoma. Thus, this study was interested in using in oro-nasal cancer dogs. Saliva transferrin might be used for early detection in oro-nasal cancer dogs, this protein does not usually present in the early stage of tumor but is found of the late stage. Saliva samples from fifteen dogs with oro-nasal cancers (experimental group) and nine dogs with chronic hyperplastic gingivitis (control group) were analyzed by ELISA assays. The result showed that a mean level of saliva transferrin in the experimental group before surgical treatment (3.040 ± 0.113 µg/ml) was in significantly (p > 0.05) higher than the control group (2.698 ± 0.765 µg/ml), significant difference could not be detected in statistic test. The concentration of the postoperative saliva transferrin was also not significantly differentfrom the control group. The quantity of the preoperative saliva transferrin was not significantly different from that of the postoperative saliva transferrin. Dogs with clinical stage I had the highest saliva transferrin level compared with the level of other stages. This agreed with a previous research in human. However, there was only one dog with clinical stage I in this study, which was not enough for statistical analysis. In this study, transferrin receptor expression by immunohistochemistry in oro-nasal cancer dogs was significantly higher than in normal dogs (p < 0.001) by immunohistochemistry. Therefore, the level of saliva transferrin is not suitable for early detection in canine oro-nasal cancers because there are many environmental factors affecting saliva transferrin concentrations more samples are needed for analysis. Transferrin receptor might be more suitable than the saliva transferrin in monitoring and prognos is of marker canine oral tumors.
