Among the malignant neoplasms that occur in the mouth, 95% are represented by oral squamous cell carcinoma (oscc). in brazil, the estimates for the 2014, according to the inca point more than 15,290 new cases. these data show that the oscc represents a public health problem because of the morbidity away a large numbers of patients from de work, and weigh the cost of health care in the state, due the days of hospitalization and the treatment applied. the pathogenesis of the oscc is related to genetic factors as well as chemical agents, such as tobacco and alcohol, physical and biological agents considered carcinogenic. the transcription factor twist was recently appointed as an important regulator of emt during tumor progression and metastasis and has become an important diagnostic and prognostic marker for patients due to the fact its positive upregulation and methylation of the gene are being implicated in several cancers. although many studies provide important insights into understanding the biology of malignant tumors as well as genes involved in emt, twist mechanisms in tumorigenesis and epithelial-mesenchymal transition in oral squamous cell carcinoma remain to be elucidated. in this study we investigated the pattern of expression of twist protein by immunohistochemical technique in 59 oscc samples from patients from the national health system of the state of pará and evaluated the possible association of the results with clinical and pathologic features survival of patients.the results showed a statistically significant association between alcohol consumption and the most sites affected by the oscc, suggesting that ethanol may play a potentiating role of tobacco agents in sites that receive greater exposure of these substances. the expression of twist protein also showed a decrease in average survival of individuals. despite this decline have not shown statistical significance in our studies, we believe that it should be more widely studied, aiming at a better understanding of its role in oral squamous cell carcinoma. the positivity of protein labeling demonstrated relationship to smoking, where 87.8% of smoking patients showed positive staining for protein, corroborating the fact that smoking can modulate the expression of emt markers including twist. in summary, the results of this study show some intriguing correlations, which in our opinion deserve special attention in order to be clarified. as the intracellular localization of the protein observed in this study, is probably related to some oncogenic process is not described
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