Age and risk of recurrence in oral tongue squamous cell carcinoma: Systematic review

Abstract

The incidence of oral tongue squamous cell carcinoma has been increasing in young patients (≤45 years) without a clear etiologic driver. It is unknown if younger patients have an increased risk of recurrence compared to older patients. A literature search was conducted through January 2020 using PubMed/MEDLINE, Embase, Cochrane, Scopus, Science Direct, and clinicaltrials.gov. This review was registered with PROSPERO (ID: CRD42020167498) and the PRISMA statement was followed. Studies were eligible for inclusion if they assessed risk of recurrence by age using a timeto-event analysis, used an age cutoff of ≤45 years or less for the younger cohort, and limited the analysis to the oral tongue subsite. Data were extracted independently by two reviewers using a form with a prespecified list of variables. There were 13 articles that met criteria for the qualitative synthesis (n = 1763 patients). The reported 5-year rates of disease-free survival ranged from 30% to 72% for the younger cohorts and 42% to 81% for the older cohorts. Three studies reported a statistically significant increased risk of recurrence in younger patients, three studies reported a nonsignificant increased risk in younger patients, and seven studies reported a similar risk in younger patients based on the time-to-event analyses. There may be an increased risk of recurrence for younger patients with oral tongue cancer. A definitive conclusion is precluded by limitations among individual studies, and additional research is warranted to examine this question.

Oral squamous cell carcinoma outcome in adolescent/young adult: Systematic review and meta‐analysis

“…25,26 Our random effect meta-analysis showed higher relapse frequency in the young group after primary treatment (pooled RR = 1.31; 95% CI [1.10-1.56]) similar to another systematic review that used the ≤45-year-old cut-off in oral tongue SCC. 37 In this review, Tateda et al 24 found more relapses in older patients, but its cohort included only nine young patients and showed high CI [0.06-1.84].…”

Assessing the effect of human dental pulp mesenchymal stem cell secretome on human oral, breast, and melanoma cancer cell lines

“…While this is encouraging, it is imperative to understand that all cancers declared to have R0 resection (Microscopically margin-negative resection) can still harbor islands of micrometastasis and in-transit lesions, presence of synchronous and metachronous lesions, or in the case of breast cancer, multi-centric or multi-focal lesions that could be missed while targeting the primary lesion. These factor towards metastasis in oral cancer ( Warshavsky et al, 2019 ), breast cancer ( Pérez-González et al, 2017 , Wang et al, 2020 ), and melanoma ( Rajaee et al, 2021 ), and recurrence associated with cancers of the oral cavity ( Lenze et al, 2020 ), breast ( Wang et al, 2020 ), and melanoma ( Costa Svedman et al, 2016 ). In light of this, our study questioned the safety profile using mesenchymal stem cells and their secretome for reconstruction and tissue regeneration post-cancer treatment as discussed.…”

Identification of ferroptosis‐related genes as potential biomarkers of tongue squamous cell carcinoma using an integrated bioinformatics approach

“…TSCC is the most common malignancy in the oral cavity; despite advances in diagnosis and treatment, the prognosis of advanced states has not significantly improved [28]. The reported 5-year rates of diseasefree survival ranged from 30% to 72% for the younger cohorts (≤45 years ) and 42% to 81% for the older cohorts [29], and the etiology of tongue cancer, especially the molecular mechanism, remains unclear. Ferroptosis may play a key role in tumor suppression and is a potential target for cancer therapy.…”