Diagnostic Performance of Cortactin in the Diagnosis of Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Abstract Background: Cortactin gene was up-regulated in various human cancers. However, the role of cortactin in the diagnosis of oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) remained unclear. The aim of this study was to investigate the diagnostic value of cortactin in OSCC patients.Methods: The relative mRNA expression levels of cortactin in OSCC tissues and adjacent normal oral mucosal tissues were detected by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). Chi-square test was used to analyze the correlation between cortactin expression and clinical characteristics of patients. The diagnostic value of cortactin in OSCC patients was estimated via receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis.Results: Compared with the normal controls, cortactin mRNA expression was significantly increased in OSCC tissues (P<0.001). Importantly, notable correlations were found between cortactin expression and tumor size (P=0.040), TNM stage (P=0.018), lymph node metastasis (P=0.013) as well as recurrence (P=0.031). Furthermore, the result of ROC curve analysis showed that the area under the curve (AUC) was 0.867 with a sensitivity of 76.2% and a specificity of 86.9%. It revealed that the diagnostic value of cortactin was high in OSCC patients.Conclusions: Our data reveal that cortactin expression is up-regulated in OSCC and correlated with tumor progression. Cortactin may be a potential bio-marker for early diagnosis of OSCC.