AUTHOR=Wang Xiao-Shuang , Sun Zhi , Liu Li-Wei , Du Qiu-Zheng , Liu Zhang-Suo , Yang Yan-Jie , Xue Peng , Zhao Hong-Yu 

TITLE=Potential Metabolic Biomarkers for Early Detection of Oral Lichen Planus, a Precancerous Lesion

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Pharmacology

VOLUME=11

YEAR=2020

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/pharmacology/articles/10.3389/fphar.2020.603899

DOI=10.3389/fphar.2020.603899

ISSN=1663-9812

ABSTRACT=<p><bold>Background:</bold> Oral lichen planus (OLP) is a T-cell-mediated chronic inflammatory disorder and precancerous oral lesion with high incidence. The current diagnostic method of OLP is very limited and metabolomics may provide a new approach for quantitative evaluation.</p><p><bold>Methods:</bold> The Ultra-Performance Liquid Chromatography-Quadrupole/Orbitrap High Resolution Mass Spectrometry (UHPLC-Q-Orbitrap HRMS) was applied to analyze the change of metabolites in serum of patients with OLP. A total of 115 OLP patients and 124 healthy controls were assigned to either a training set (<italic>n</italic> = 160) or a test set (<italic>n</italic> = 79). The potential biomarkers and the change of serum metabolites were profiled and evaluated by multivariate analysis.</p><p><bold>Results:</bold> Totally, 23 differential metabolites were identified in the training set between OLP group and healthy group. Three prominent metabolites in receiver operating characteristic (ROC) were selected as a panel to distinguish OLP or healthy individuals in the test set, and the diagnostic accuracy was 86.1%.</p><p><bold>Conclusions:</bold> This study established a new method for the early detection of OLP by analyzing serum metabolomics using UHPLC-Q-Orbitrap HRMS, which will help in understanding the pathological processes of OLP and identifying precancerous lesions in oral cavity.</p>