The clinical effectiveness of reflectance optical spectroscopy for the in vivo diagnosis of oral lesions

Optical spectroscopy devices are being developed and tested for the screening and diagnosis of oral precancer and cancer lesions. This study reports a device that uses white light for detection of suspicious lesions and green–amber light at 545 nm that detect tissue vascularity on patients with several suspicious oral lesions. The clinical grading of vascularity was compared to the histological grading of the biopsied lesions using specific biomarkers. Such a device, in the hands of dentists and other health professionals, could greatly increase the number of oral cancerous lesions detected in early phase. The purpose of this study is to correlate the clinical grading of tissue vascularity in several oral suspicious lesions using the IdentafiH system with the histological grading of the biopsied lesions using specific vascular markers. Twenty-one patients with various oral lesions were enrolled in the study. The lesions were visualized using IdentafiH device with white light illumination, followed by visualization of tissue autofluorescence and tissue reflectance. Tissue biopsied was obtained from the all lesions and both histopathological and immunohistochemical studies using a vascular endothelial biomarker（CD34） were performed on these tissue samples. The clinical vascular grading using the green–amber light at 545 nm and the expression pattern and intensity of staining for CD34 in the different biopsies varied depending on lesions, grading ranged from 1 to3. The increase in vascularity was observed in abnormal tissues when compared to normal mucosa, but this increase was not limited to carcinoma only as hyperkeratosis and other oral diseases, such as lichen planus, also showed increase in vascularity. Optical spectroscopy is a promising technology for the detection of oral mucosal abnormalities; however, further investigations with a larger population group is required to evaluate the usefulness of these devices in differentiating benign lesions from potentially malignant lesions.

Glycine supplementation reduces the severity of chemotherapy-induced oral mucositis in hamsters

Objective: Oral mucositis (OM) is a devastating toxicity associated with cytotoxic cancer therapy. The OM pathogenesis and the complex interactions occur in response to tissue insult. Application of this evolving model has aided in the development of mechanistically based therapies for the prevention and treatment of mucositis. The present study was to assess the effects of glycine supplementation on chemotherapy-induced oral mucositis. Methods: In a hamster cheek pouch model of chemotherapy-induced oral mucositis, one group of 20 animals received systemic glycine supplementation for 7 days, while another similar control group did not. Clinical mucositis severity and neutrophil infiltrate (on histology) were assessed by blinded examiners. Free radical production was measured as malondialdehyde (MDA) levels. Results: As compared to control animals, glycine-treated animals demonstrated a highly significant reduction in clinical severity of oral mucositis, neutrophil infiltrate, and MDA levels (p < 0.001 for all). Conclusions: Glycine supplementation reduces the severity of chemotherapy-induced oral mucositis in an animal model. This effect is at least partly mediated through inhibition of the inflammatory response and reduced production of damaging free radicals.