Clinical Significance of Antioxidant Levels in Saliva of Raw Betel Nut Chewer’s: an Experience from Assam

Background: Saliva as a diagnostic component is emerging as powerful diagnostic tool. Saliva is delivered from various salivary glands. It is always considered to be the first line of defense against oxidative stress and often provide the perfect medium to explore for health and disease surveillance. Various sources of oral free radicals and reactive oxygen species (ROS) are oral disease or/and tobacco consumption. Materials and methods: we have determined the salivary antioxidant specially targeting uric acid and total antioxidant capacity in three groups i.e. Control population (No exposure to betel nut and healthy), raw betel nut chewers and oral cancer patients. Result and Conclusion: Significant variation is seen in all the three categories. Mean value uric acid and Total Antioxidant in cancer patients and Tamol chewers are less as compare to control with the mean value of 2.7330, 3.6185 and 6.8545 for uric acid and .98635, 51500 and 1.19500 for total antioxidant capacity respectively which state an oxidative state in the oral cavity of the respective categories. Uric acid and total antioxidant capacity can be the important and promising salivary biomarker for raw betel nut associated oral cancer.