Association of clinicial and histopathologic aspects with immunohistochemical expression of XRCC1 and APE1 proteins in oral leukoplakias.
Oral leukoplakia; Epithelial dysplasia; DNA repair.
Potentially malignant disorders (PMDs) include lesions of wide clinical variation that may show morphological changes which in some situations may be associated with a greater or lesser possibility of malignant transformation. Oral leukoplakias (OLs) are the most common oral cavity PMD. At biopsy examination, most OLs exhibit histological changes associated or not with epithelial dysplasia. However, it is discussed whether the degree of epithelial dysplasia constitutes an important factor to denote greater possibility of its malignant transformation. Thus, it is possible that some molecular alterations occur without alteration in the cell phenotype and is important to study these alterations to understand the mechanisms involved in the malignant transformation of these lesions. In this context, it is mentioned that DNA repair is an important genetic mechanism, which maintains the integrity of the genome and prevents carcinogenesis, from specific genes and proteins, it promotes the detection and removal of the damage with subsequent reconstruction of the double helix. The XRCC1 and APE1 proteins act on the BER pathway, one of the main pathways involved in repairing genetic damage. Thus, the present study aims to evaluate the immunohistochemical expression of the XRCC1 and APE1 proteins and their association with pathological clinical aspects in a series of cases of oral leukoplakias so that it is possible to understand if alterations in the expression of these proteins constitute Early events in oral carcinogenesis.