Human Papillomavirus and Esophageal Carcinoma: A Study in China

Eesophagealsquamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is considered as the ninth most common malignancy in the world. There are a number of suspected casual reasons of this type of carcinoma. The association of viral infection with EC (esophageal carcinoma) has been reported in last 30 years. Human papillomavirus (HPV) is said to be a major aetiology in areas with high incidence of esophageal carcinoma, but the prevalence and the role of HPV virus in the aetiology of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is still uncertain. In this study we designed to evaluate the prevalence of HPV in EC cases diagnosed in pathology department of Hebei, China. In this study 170 cases that were pathologically diagnosed as esophagealcarcinoma were obtained from department of pathology files at Hebei provincebetween2011-2013. DNA material was extracted from formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissues (FFPET) and PCR was performed to detect HPV genome. In this study negative and positive control were used for HPV 16/18 and beta-globin PCR as internal control. More than 95% of FFPETs had acceptable result in DNA qualification PCR test. Overall prevalence of HPV in tumour tissues was 81.17% in GP6+/GP5+ PCR, 40.58% by HPV16 and 49.41% for HPV18. The presence of HPV DNA in esophagus tumours (high risk HPV types 16 and 18) implicates HPV as one of the possible aetiology factors in esophageal carcinoma.