Preliminary report of expression of bax in oral cavity pathologies.

Bax is considered one of major effectors of apoptosis - programmed cell death. Immunohistoche- mical analysis of in vitro patterns of bax expression was mostly investigated in mammalian cell lines and tis- sues. The present study is the first in vivo molecular analysis of bax expression in oral cavity pathologies. The study population consisted of 45 patients with hyperplasia, neoplasm in situ malignancy, and carcino- ma. Biopsies were taken from incision line, tumour sec- tion, and healthy tissue. bax expression was investigated depending on the site of biopsy material sampling and final histopathology result. No statisti- cally significant difference was demonstrated in bax expression between four hyperplasia subgroups. How- ever, statistically significant differences in bax expres- sion were found between the three basic study groups (P = 0.001). Statistically significant differences in bax expression were demonstrated depending on tissue col- lection site (P = 0.0002). We conclude that differences in bax expression may play a role in the pathogenesis of neoplastic disease.