Background: The number of patients with oral cancer in India is increasing gradually (especially in younger people). Although the diagnostic modalities and therapeutic management of oral cancer are improving, the treatment outcome and prognosis of oral cancer remain poor. The absence of definite early warning symptoms for most head and neck cancers suggests that sensitive and specific biomarkers are likely to be important in screening for high-risk patients. Aims: To analyze serum adenosine deaminase (ADA) levels in oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) cases who reported to our institute. Materials and Methods: A prospective study was performed on 100 histopathologically proven cases of OSCC (study group) and 100 normal healthy individuals (control group). Independent sample and one sample t-tests and one way ANOVA followed by Tuckey's POST HOC test were conducted for analysis. Results: Statistically significant increase in serum ADA levels was observed in OSCC cases compared to the control group. Also serum ADA level increased significantly with the histopathological grade. Conclusions: Serum ADA levels in OSCC may be a useful diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers in clinical practice and our findings suggest that a large-scale study is warranted to confirm clinical utility as a prognostic and diagnostic biomarker.

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Background & objectives:The present study evaluated usefulness of cation exchange highperformance liquid chromatography (HPLC) as a screening tool for early detection of thalassemia & hemoglobin variants in dried blood spot (DBS) samples. We discussed the laboratory aspects ofdiagnostic difficulties in HPLC based screening algorithm in Indian population.Methods:-A total of 32000 DBS samples collected from neonates were primarily screened for hemoglobinopathies on HPLC between June 2013 and May 2016. All presumptive abnormal profiles were re-tested on HPLC after 6 months of age. The follow up results were correlated with parental studies and additional investigations for confirmation.Results: Totally 982 samples (3.06%) showed abnormal HPLC pattern on primary neonatal screening. In follow up testing of 914 presumptive abnormal cases, 583 (1.82%) cases have been confirmed for variant hemoglobin's. Sickle variant was the commonest hemoglobinopathy found in 156 (26.7%) cases. HbE (21.4%), β-thalassemia (19.5%) and HbD (19.5%) disorders being the next common variants. HPLC alone diagnosed more than 85% cases with abnormal variants. Interpretation &Conclusions: Analysis of DBS samples on HPLC is a convenient primary tool for hemoglobin variant screening for hemoglobinopathies. Our study enabled us to design a practical flow chart for large scale HPLC based screening of major hemoglobinopathies with judicious requirement of investigations on other platforms.