Objective:To measure conceptual oral health knowledge among school teachers using comprehensive measure of oral health knowledge (CMOHK) instrument.Materials and Methods:A total of 240 school teachers drawn through cluster random sampling from across Sullia taluk. Conceptual knowledge was assessed using Comprehensive measure of oral health knowledge questionnaire. Oral health status was recorded on a World Health Organization oral health assessment Proforma.Results:Overall distribution of CMOHK scores revealed that 106(44%) subjects had good conceptual oral health knowledge, 81(33.7%) subjects had fair and 53(22%) subjects were categorized under poor conceptual knowledge respectively. Statistically significant difference was observed for mean scores for conceptual knowledge in relation to gender (12.8v/s 15.3), in terms of type of school teachers (14.4 v/s 11.2) and in relation to age of the subjects. Primary school teachers exhibited a consistently better CMOHK scores 0.003(0.001-0.011) compared to their high school counterparts 0.003(0.001-0.012).Conclusion:The mean CMOHK score of this group was 12.5±1.3 and is considered to be fair. There is an inverse association between age, educational levels and income in relation to CMOHK scores.

Objective:Cancerous cells show increased glycolysis rate. This will increase overall levels of pyruvate as it is one of the end products of glycolysis. The present on-going study is to estimate the levels of pyruvate in saliva and serum among healthy and oral cancer subjects.Settings and Design:Hospital-based cross-sectional comparative study.Methodology:A total of 50 subjects among healthy and oral cancer subjects were selected based on clinical and histological criteria. Saliva and serum samples were collected and subjected to pyruvate level estimation using biochemical analysis.Statistical Analysis:Descriptive analysis and Mann-Whitney test were used to find the statistical difference between the two independent groups.Results:Serum pyruvic acid levels of the healthy group were 1.09 ± 0.14 and for oral cancer, it was 2.95 ± 0.59 and salivary level were 3.49 ± 0.47 and 1.32 ± 0.10 respectively. Mann-Whitney test showed statistically significant difference in serum and salivary pyruvate level in between two groups (P < 0.000 respectively).Conclusion:The present study showed noticeable variation in the level of pyruvic acid among healthy and oral cancer subjects. This generates the hypothesis that estimation of the pyruvic acid can be a new tool to screening of the cancer.

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