Preoperative oral health care reduces postoperative inflammation and complications in oral cancer patients.

The records of 70 patients with oral cancer who were treated at a single institution between 2008 and 2014 were reviewed. The body temperature, white blood cell count, and C-reactive protein (CRP) levels were compared between those who had received preoperative oral care (oral care group) and those who had not received any (non-oral care group). When the patients were divided into those who underwent minimally invasive surgery and those who underwent severely invasive surgery, the mean CRP level in the early postoperative period was lower in the oral care group as compared with the non-oral care group in those who underwent minimally invasive surgery as well as those who underwent severely invasive surgery. However, the mean CRP level was most evidently reduced in the severely invasive group on days 1 and 3-5. However, no significant differences were observed with regard to the percentage of postoperative infectious complications (for example, surgical site infection, anastomotic leak and pneumonia) between the oral care (13.6%) and non-oral care (20.8%) groups, though a reduced prevalence of postoperative complications following preoperative oral care was noted. The results of the present study suggest that preoperative oral care can decrease inflammation during the early postoperative stage in patients with oral cancer who undergo severely invasive surgery.

A case of tooth autotransplantation after long-term cryopreservation using a programmed freezer with a magnetic field.

This case report describes the treatment of a skeletal Class III malocclusion with autotransplantation of a cryopreserved tooth. To gain an esthetic facial profile and good occlusion, extraction of bimaxillary premolars and surgical therapy were chosen. The patient had chronic apical periodontitis on the lower left first molar. Although she did not feel any pain in that region, the tooth was considered to have a poor prognosis. Therefore, we cryopreserved the extracted premolars to prepare for autotransplantation in the lower first molar area because the tooth would probably need to be removed in the future. The teeth were frozen by a programmed freezer with a magnetic field (CAS freezer) that was developed for tissue cryopreservation and were cryopreserved in -150°C deep freezer. After 1.5 years of presurgical orthodontic treatment, bilateral sagittal split ramus osteotomy was performed for mandible setback. Improvement of the facial profile and the occlusion were achieved in the retention phase. Six years after the initial visit, the patient had pain on the lower left first molar, and discharge of pus was observed, so we extracted the lower left first molar and autotransplanted the cryopreserved premolar. Three years later, healthy periodontium was observed at the autotransplanted tooth. This case report suggests that long-term cryopreservation of teeth by a CAS freezer is useful for later autotransplantation, and this can be a viable technique to replace missing teeth.

Clinicopathological analysis of salivary gland carcinomas and literature review.

Malignant salivary gland tumors are rare and exhibit a broad spectrum of phenotypic heterogeneity. The objective of this study was to investigate prognostic factors in patients with salivary gland carcinomas and review the results in light of other reports. We retrospectively reviewed 40 patients with primary salivary gland carcinomas who were diagnosed and treated at our institution between 1991 and 2014. Of the 40 tumors, 19 (47.5%) were mucoepidermoid carcinomas, 11 (27.5%) were adenoid cystic carcinomas, 7 (17.5%) were acinic cell carcinomas, 2 (5.0%) were myoepithelial carcinomas and 1 (2.5%) was a squamous cell carcinoma. Clinically positive lymph nodes were present in 4 patients (10.0%). As regards clinical stage, 15 cases (37.5%) were stage I, 13 (32.5%) were stage II, 1 (2.5%) was stage III and 11 (27.5%) were stage IVA. The majority of the patients (97.5%) were treated with surgery, of whom 25 (62.5%) received surgery alone and 14 (35.0%) underwent surgery in combination with chemotherapy or chemotherapy and radiotherapy. The median follow-up time for all the patients was 48 months. The disease-specific survival rate at 5 years was 87.1%. We identified a significant correlation between poor survival rate and histological grade (intermediate/high), tumor size (T3/T4), lymph node metastasis (node-positive) and clinical stage (III/IV) using the Kaplan-Meier method (P<0.05 for each). In addition, the Cox proportional hazards regression analysis confirmed that lymph node metastasis and tumor size were independent prognostic factors for disease-specific survival (hazard ratio = 18.7 and 15.1, respectively; P=0.023 and 0.037, respectively). Furthermore, tumor size was found to be a predictive factor regarding recurrence in the multivariate logistic regression analysis (odds ratio = 8.35; P=0.025). Our results suggest that lymph node metastasis and tumor size are significant prognostic factors for patients with salivary gland carcinomas.

Autocrine galectin-1 promotes collective cell migration of squamous cell carcinoma cells through up-regulation of distinct integrins.

We found that high galectin-1 (Gal-1) mRNA levels were associated with invasive squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) cells that expressed Snail, an epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) regulator. Both Gal-1 overexpression and soluble Gal-1 treatment accelerated invasion and collective cell migration, along with activation of cdc42 and Rac. Soluble Gal-1 activated c-Jun N-terminal kinase to increase expression levels of integrins α2 and ß5, which were essential for Gal-1 dependent collective cell migration and invasiveness. Soluble Gal-1 also increased the incidence of EMT in Snail-expressing SCC cells; these were a minor population with an EMT phenotype under growing conditions. Our findings indicate that soluble Gal-1 promotes invasiveness through enhancing collective cell migration and increasing the incidence of EMT.

Snail promotes Cyr61 secretion to prime collective cell migration and form invasive tumor nests in squamous cell carcinoma.

We previously identified genes associated with Snail-mediated squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) invasiveness, in which we observed significant elevation of Cyr61 expression. In this study, SCC cell lines overexpressing Cyr61 exhibited constitutive activation of Rho A and upregulated invasiveness without the disruption of homophilic cell attachment. Humoral Cyr61 enhanced further production of endogenous Cyr61 by SCC cells, which stimulated collective cell migration and the development of an invasive tumor nest. We propose a Cyr61-dependent model for the development of invasive SCC nest, whereby a subset of tumor cells that highly produce Cyr61 may direct other tumor cells to undergo collective cell migration, resulting in a formation of primary SCC mass.