TELOMERASE ACTIVITY AND HUMAN-PAPILLOMAVIRUS IN MALIGNANT, PREMALIGNANT AND BENIGN CERVICAL LESIONS

The purpose of this study was to define a correlation between telomera se activity and human papillomavirus (HPV) in normal control tissue an d in benign, premalignant and malignant cervical lesions. Telomerase a ctivity was detectable in 33 out of 34 cases of squamous-cell carcinom a, five out of six cases of microinvasive carcinoma, 8 out of 20 cases and two out of six cases of high- and low-grade squamous intraepithel ial lesions (SILs) respectively. The higher frequency of positive telo merase in invasive carcinoma compared with SILs was observed in both H PV-associated and non-associated groups. Whereas 92.6% of HPV-positive and 100% of HPV-negative invasive lesions expressed telomerase, only 50% of HPV-positive and 25% of HPV-negative SILs did. Interestingly, t elomerase activity was also detectable in 13 out of 28 cases of benign lesions regardless of the presence of HPV. In conclusion, there may b e two roles of telomerase in the cervix. The first one would present i n benign lesions; the second is associated with cancer development and activated during the late stage of multistep carcinogenesis in both H PV-positive and -negative groups.