Does Dental Implant and Peri-implantitis Predispose to Oral Cancer – A mRNA differential expression study

Brief Background Dental Implant associated malignant lesions are being increasingly reported. The pathway for this phenomenon largely remains unexplored and an attempt is made to address the same. Materials and Methods The mRNA expression of tissues from healthy peri-implant and peri-implantitis tissues were collected from human Gene Expression Omnibus database and subjected to differential expression (DE) analysis with adjusted P-value≤0.05 and Log-Fold-change at 1.5. From DE genes, those entities that were associated with “reaction to metals” were collated. Significant genes were subjected to network analysis and subsequent pathway enrichment analysis. Results In all 430 genes had DE of which 22 genes were related to the“reaction to metals”. They were the IL1A, CPNE1, MDM2, CALR, NCSTN, HSPA5, NPC1, S100A8, HIF1A, CPNE3, EIF2A, APP, KRT14, SEC31A, S100A16, IQGAP1, PRNP, NFE2L2, ADAM9, B2M, CAV1 and LGMN. Network and enrichment analysis revealed them to be associated with several cancer pathways and signaling network. Discussion Peri-implantitis has DE genes related to reaction to metals, are associated with tumorigenesis, apoptosis, cellular senescence and biological process linked with malignant transformation. In presence of elevated risks cumulative alterations in the transcriptome profile may increase the risk of malignant transformation. Key Words Dental Implants, Peri-implantitis, Oral Cancer, Implant associated cancer, Differential Gene expression, Metal ion, Titanium.