%0 Journal Article %T Expression of E- Cadherin and Levels of Dysplasia in Oral Leukoplakia - A Prospective Cohort Study %J Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention %I West Asia Organization for Cancer Prevention (WAOCP), APOCP's West Asia Chapter. %Z 1513-7368 %A Sathish, I Ilangani %A Asokan, Kannan %A C.L, Krithika %A Ramanathan, Arvind %D 2020 %\ 02/01/2020 %V 21 %N 2 %P 405-410 %! Expression of E- Cadherin and Levels of Dysplasia in Oral Leukoplakia - A Prospective Cohort Study %K E - cadherin %K Oral leukoplakia %K cancer progression %K PCR %R 10.31557/APJCP.2020.21.2.405 %X Aim: Enormous attempts have been made to develop and establish markers that determines the susceptibility of potentially malignant tissues to transform to oral cancer. E - cadherin encoded by CDH1 gene is a protein which plays an important role in cellular adhesion. This study aimed to assess the relationship between the expression of E- cadherin and different grades of epithelial dysplasia in oral leukoplakia. Materials and Methods: Tumour biopsies from fifty leukoplakia patients was collected. Half of the tissue was sent for histopathological examination and other half was subjected to see E - cadherin expression by real time PCR. Results: On assessing, the expression of E - cadherin was found to be high in samples with mild dysplasia followed by samples with moderate dysplasia. Samples with severe dysplastic feature showed least expression of E - cadherin. All statistical analyses were performed using Statistical Package for Social science (SPSS) and was proven that there is significant decrease in the expression of E - cadherin as the degree of dysplasia increases with a p value 0.001 and confidence interval 95%. Conclusion: We conclude that loss of E - cadherin can be used as a tumour marker that could determine the susceptibility of normal and potentially malignant tissues to transform into oral cancers. To generalise our results, further prospective studies with a large sample size using quantitative real time PCR to read the gene expression should be carried out at multi centre levels.   %U https://journal.waocp.org/article_88965_7f14c891dcb1d8fc31730ed256f9a42a.pdf