Human papillomavirus prevalence in lung carcinomas in Bulgaria

This study aimed to screen Bulgarian lung cancer patients for the prevalence of HPV16 and 18. We analyzed 209 biopsy specimens from patients with histologically proven lung cancer and non‐cancer cases. Each sample was subjected to three parallel PCRs using broad spectrum GP5+/6+ primers and type‐specific (TS) primers for HPV types 16 and 18. Of the 132 lung carcinoma samples 33(25 %) were positive for HPV16 and/or HPV18 by TS PCR and only 5(3.8%) samples were HPV positive by consensus PCR. All non‐malignant controls were HPV negative. HPV18 was more prevalent, found in 11.4% of samples, followed by HPV16 detected in 9.1% samples. 4.5% of cases were positive for both, HPV16 and HPV18. HPV16/18 were most prevalent in small cell carcinoma and least prevalent in squamous cell carcinoma cases, found in 29.2% and 23.3% respectively. HPV was only detected in squamous cell carcinoma and adenosquamous carcinoma cases with consensus PCR. This study revealed a high HPV16/18 prevalence in lung carcinoma samples from Bulgarian patients when TS PCR as detection method was used. There was significant difference in HPV positivity detected by consensus and TS PCR, confirming the importance of methodological issue for discrepancy observed in previous studies. HPV18 was more common than HPV16. We did not observe association of HPV16/18 status and histopathological diagnosis.
Source: Microbiology and Immunology - Category: Microbiology Authors: Tags: Original Article Source Type: research