Plasma metabolite profiling and chemometric analyses of tobacco snuff dippers and patients with oral cancer: Relationship between metabolic signatures.

Abstract

Cancer of oral cavity is a seriously growing problem in many parts of the world. In Indian subcontinent, most of these cases have been attributed to the use of tobacco-related products. This study is focused on the identification of distinguishing metabolites of oral cancer in comparison with tobacco snuff dippers and healthy controls. A total of 234 plasma samples including 62 healthy controls, 81 tobacco snuff dippers, and 91 oral cancer samples were analyzed using mass spectrometry. Twenty-nine of 3326 metabolites were found to distinguish among oral cancer, tobacco snuff dippers, and healthy controls using P-value ≤.001 and fold change ≥3. Prediction model was generated with an overall accuracy of 89.3%. Two metabolites, that is, stearyl alcohol and sucrose, can be used as predictive biomarkers showing progression of tobacco snuff dippers toward oral cancer. The unique metabolite profile gives evidence of a strong correlation between tobacco snuff dipping and oral cancer.