Prevalence of Human Papillomavirus Infection in the Korean Oral Cancer Patients

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: High risk human papillomavirus (HPV) is the main source of cervical cancer, nearly up to 100%. Because there are no affordable data regarding the incidence of HPV in different sites of oral cavity, the purpose of this study is to review the previous article and to find out about the incidence and types of HPV in specific areas of oral cavity.METHODS: We examined a total of 106 patients with oral cavity cancer for HPV detection. Available DNA chip (MY-HPV chip kit(R), Mygene Co., Korea) was used for the detection of low risk HPV types (6, 11, 34, 40, 42, 43, 44) and high risk HPV types (16, 18, 31, 33, 35, 39, 45, 51, 52, 54, 56, 58). Patients were previously diagnosed as invasive cancer of oral cavity. Specimen used for HPV detection was extracted from the main mass during resection and were tested for HPV type, performed by a DNA chip method.RESULTS: Histologic results showed that there were squamous cell carcinomas, mucoepidermoid carcinomas, cystadenocarcinomas, leiomyosarcoma and etc. Among HPV positive cancer, 2 patients showed positive for high risk HPV type 16, 3 patients showed positive for low risk HPV type 6 and the other 2 patients were positive for other types of HPV. Of the 7 patients with HPV positive, 4 patients were on the tongue, 3 on the lower gingiva.CONCLUSION: Most of the HPV positive cancers were on the tongue in our study. Cervical cancer of HPV infection is reported to be increasing in our society and because HPV infection largely spreads by sexual contact, the incidence of oral cancer with HPV infection is greatly assumed to be on the increase, simultaneously. Because the incidence of HPV on specific areas of oral cavity among oral cancer patients is not identified, more studies are ongoing.