Prognostic Implications of DNA Repair, Ploidy and Telomerase in the Malignant Transformation Risk Assessment of Leukoplakia.

Background: Although leukoplakia shows a higher risk for malignant transformation to oral cancer, currently there are no clinically relevant biomarker which can predict the potentially high risk leukoplakia. This study aimed to investigate the genetic alterations such as DNA ploidy, telomerase expression and DNA repair capacity as predictive markers of malignant transformation risk of leukoplakia.

Methods: The study was initiated in September 2005 and patients were followed up to March 2014.