Clinical and prognostic significance of human papillomavirus in a Chinese population of cervical cancers

Objective: To investigate the clinical and prognostic significance of human papillomavirus (HPV) in a Chinese population of cervical cancers. Methods: We studied 121 cervical cancer tissue samples from patients treated at our hospital. Identification and typing of HPV were done by polymerase chain r eaction (PCR) using consensus primers MY11 and MY09 followed by direct DNA sequencing. The results were correlated with various clinical and prognosti c parameters. Results: We found HPV DNA in 95 (78.5%) cases, including HPV- 16 in 59 (48.8%) and HPV-18 in 14 (11.6%)cases. chi (2) analysis revealed n o significant correlation between the presence of HPV DNA and age at diagno sis, clinical stage, histologic type, tumor grading, 2-year and 5-year surv ival rate. Of the factors evaluated, age at diagnosis and histologic type w ere found to have a statistically significant relationship with HPV type. T he mean age of the HPV-18 group was 48.6 years compared to 57.1 years for t he HPV-16 group (p = 0.045) and 58.2 years for the HPV-negative group (p = 0.04). HPV-18 was detected more often in adenocarcinomas (AC) than in squam ous cell carcinomas (SCC). Conversely HPV-16 was detected significantly mor e often in SCC (p < 0.0001). The HPV-negative group also had a higher incid ence of SCC (p = 0.007). HPV-18-positive patients seemed to have more nodal involvement than both HPV-16-positive patients (45.5 vs. 20.8%) and HPV ne gative patients (45.5 vs. 18.2%); however, it did not reach statistical sig nificance. Conclusions: These observations suggest that the presence of HPV DNA does not bear any clinical or prognostic significance in a Chinese pop ulation of cervical cancers. HPV-18 is found more often in younger patients and is associated with AC. Copyright (C) 2001 S Karger AG, Basel.