Salivary mRNA markers having the potential to detect oral squamous cell carcinoma segregated from oral leukoplakia with dysplasia

Highlights • Evaluation of the presence of extracellular IL-1B, IL-8, OAZ and SAT mRNAs in saliva. • Employment of saliva in early detection of oral squamous cell carcinoma and oral dysplasia is examined. • Quantitative RT-PCR was performed on the isolated RNA from the saliva samples. • Binary logistic regression and ROC curve analysis were applied on the data. • Combination of SAT, IL-8 mRNAs raises high predictive ability (AUC = 0.755, p = 0.007).