1996 Volume 2 Issue 2 Pages 90-94
The correlation of smoking with epithelial dysplasia and PCNA positivity was investigated in 27 patients with oral leukoplakia, for whom their smoking habit was known.
The results revealed that Brinkman indexes in leukoplakias with epithelial dysplasia were higher than those without dysplasia, but there was no significant correlation between Brinkman index and epithelial dysplasia. PCNA positivity became higher with the grade of epithelial dysplasia, and PCNA positivity had an increasing tendency in accordance with the increase of Brinkman index. Further, PCNA positivities in leukoplakias that later developed into cancer were higher than those in the other leukoplakias.
These results suggested that smoking maybe concerned with the progression of epithelial dysplasia by increasing cell proliferating activity in oral leukoplakia.
