Frequency of HPV in oral cavity squamous cell carcinoma

• Published in: BMC cancer Vol. 18; no. 1; p. 324
• Main Authors: de Abreu, Priscila Marinho, Có, Anna Clara Gregório, Azevedo, Pedro Leite, do Valle, Isabella Bittencourt, de Oliveira, Karine Gadioli, Gouvea, Sônia Alves, Cordeiro-Silva, Melissa Freitas, Louro, Iúri Drummond, de Podestá, José Roberto Vasconcelos, Lenzi, Jeferson, Sena, Agenor, Mendonça, Elismauro Francisco, von Zeidler, Sandra Lúcia Ventorin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England BioMed Central 27-03-2018; BMC
• Subjects: Adult; Aged; Aged, 80 and over; Carcinoma, Squamous Cell - epidemiology; Carcinoma, Squamous Cell - etiology; Case-Control Studies; Cross-Sectional Studies; Female; Frequency; HPV; Humans; Incidence; Male; Middle Aged; Mouth Neoplasms - epidemiology; Mouth Neoplasms - etiology; Odds Ratio; Oral cancer; Oral cavity; Papillomaviridae; Papillomavirus Infections - complications; Papillomavirus Infections - epidemiology; Papillomavirus Infections - virology; Prevalence; Risk Factors; Squamous cell carcinoma; Oral cavity; Human papillomavirus; Squamous cell carcinoma; Oral cancer; Frequency; HPV; Incidence
• ISSN: 1471-2407; 1471-2407
• DOI: 10.1186/s12885-018-4247-3

The prevalence of high-risk human papillomavirus (HPV) DNA in cases of oral cavity squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) varies widely. The aim of this study is to investigate the frequency of high-risk HPV DNA in a large Brazilian cohort of patients with oral cavity SCC.
Biopsy and resected frozen and formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded specimens of oral cavity SCC were available from 101 patients who were recruited at two Brazilian centres. Stringent measures with respect to case selection and prevention of sample contamination were adopted to ensure reliability of the data. Nested PCR using MY09/MY11 and GP5
/GP6
as well as PGMY09/11 L1 consensus primers were performed to investigate the presence of HPV DNA in the tumours. HPV-positive cases were subjected to direct sequencing. Shapiro-Wilk and Student t test were used to evaluate data normality and to compare the means, respectively. Qualitative variables were analysed by logistic regression.
Our results demonstrate that the frequency of high-risk HPV types in oral cavity SCC is very low and is less than 4%. All HPV-positive cases were HPV16. In addition, our results do not show a significant association between the tumour clinical features and the risk factors (tobacco, alcohol and HPV) for oral cavity SCC.
In the current study, we observed an overlapping pattern of risk factors that are related to tumour development. This, along with a low frequency of high-risk HPV DNA, supports the findings that HPV is not involved in the genesis of oral cavity SCC in Brazilian population.