Immunology of oral cancer--a review

Cancer of the oral cavity forms the major cancer in India constituting about 20% of all cancers. In spite of the advances made in diagnostic and therapeutic modalities, the morbidity and mortality due to this disease remains high. The overall five year survival rate is only 34%. The reason for this is mainly lack of markers for early detection, prognosis and identification of the high risk group. Immune depression is recognised as a consistent metabolic defect in oral cancer patients and our study shows that this precedes the development of the malignancy. The cancer probably enhances the depression. Monitoring of the immunoregulatory status has shown to correlate well with the prognosis of the patient in our study. Hence the monitoring of the various immune parameters would probably be a reliable marker to identify a high risk group in precancerous lesions, a prognostic indicator in oral cancer patients and an intermediate marker in intervention studies.