Prevalence of Human Papilloma Virus in the Patients with Oral Cancer Referred to Shiraz Teaching Hospital during 2016–2017

Abstract

Introduction: Cancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide and oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is the most common malignancy of the oral cavity in which there is a poor prognosis. Viruses, including Human papillomavirus (HPV), play an important role in the etiology of this cancer. The aim of this study was to evaluate the prevalence of HPV in patients with oral cancer in Shiraz. Method: In this case-control study, 100 patients with oral cancer as the case group and 100 healthy individuals as the control group were included in the study after applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, and after receiving demographic information, Nested-PCR for HPV detection was performed on their tissue samples. Finally, after entering the data into SPSS software, the data were statistically analyzed. Results: A total of 200 patients including 100 patients and 100 healthy individuals were examined. Samples of patients from different parts of the mouth but samples of healthy individuals were taken from the tonsils. The mean age of the subjects was 53/66 ± 1.38 years. The minimum and maximum ages of the subjects were 28 and 90 years, respectively. In this study, 70 (34%) of the subjects were female and 130 (65%) were male. 2 out of 100 patients in the control group and 14 out of 100 patients in the case group were infected with HPV virus in oral samples. This difference was statistically significant (p value = 0.008). In HPV-positive people, most cases of HPV were related to the tongue and then the larynx. The relationship between sampling site and HPV infection was statistically significant (p = 0.004). The association between sampling site and HPV infection in people with oral cancer was also significant. Conclusion: The results of this study showed that HPV plays a direct role in development of oral cancer in individual however, factors such as age and gender also involved. The study also found that people with oral HPV were at higher risk for developing tongue cancer.