HPV positive bronchopulmonary carcinomas in women with previous high-gradecervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN III)

A significant higher incidence of some cancers, especially lung cancer, has been found in women with previous HPV-related (human papillomavirus) uroge nital and anal neoplasias than in individuals without this particular clini cal history. The aim of our study was to investigate whether HPV is present in both CIN III (cervical intraepithelial neoplasia) lesions and bronchopu lmonary second primary cancers in women with a clinical history of both dis eases. Paraffin-embedded tumour tissue from 75 patients with bronchopulmona ry carcinomas was examined using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) techni que and in situ hybridization for the presence of human HPV. In total. 51 p rimary rumours without metastases, 11 primary tumours with metastases and 1 3 lymph node metastases without available tissue from primary tumours were analysed. In our study 37/75 primary bronchopulmonary tumours (49%) were id entified as HPV positive by the PCR method: IS cases were purely HPV 16 pos itive (49%), 12 were purely HPV 6 positive (32%), 5 cases were HPV 16/6 pos itive (14%), 1 case was HPV 16/11 positive (2%) and 1 case was HPV 16/18 po sitive (2%). Fourteen metastases were HPV positive, and HPV 16, 11 and 6 we re detected in both regional and distant metastases. Two of the HPV 16-posi tive metastases were brain metastases From two separate HPV 16-positive pri mary tumours; 35% of the HPV-positive cases were adenocarcinomas, 30% squam ous cell carcinomas, 22% oat cell carcinomas, 5% large cell carcinomas, 3% anaplastic carcinoma, 3% low-differentiated carcinoma, and 3% malignant cyl indroma. The CIN III lesions from 34 of the 37 HPV-positive bronchopulmonar y carcinomas were analysed by PCR. The overall HPV positivity in the CIN II I lesions was 74% (25/34 cases): 48% were purely HPV 16 positive, 24% purel y HPV 6 positive, 24% HPV 16;6 positive and 4% were HPV 18 positive. Our re sults indicate that HPV is also involved in the development of bronchopulmo nary cancers in women with a history of CIN III lesions.