Prevalence and genotyping of HPV in cervical cancer among Australian women

To investigate the association between HPV DNA detection and histological examination of tumor biopsies from women with cervical cancer.

A total of 186 women with cervical cancer were screened for HPV infection using MY09/MY11 primer based PCR. The status of HPV infection was correlated with histological and demographic characteristics by Fisher's exact test or Chi square test.

The prevalence of HPV infection in this Australian population was 91.9% (171). Among these 53.8% (100) were HPV type 16, 17.2% (32) HPV type 18, and 21.0% (39) other HPV types. Three significant associations were identified: (1) HPV genotype 18 and adenocarcinomas/adenosquamous carcinomas (P < 0.001); (2) HPV DNA negativity and postmenopausal status (P = 0.02); and (3) HPV DNA positivity and lymphocyte infiltration of tumor tissues (P = 0.03).

HPV infection is present in the vast majority of cervical cancer patients. However, its presence or genotyping does not seem to have a major influence on the pathogenesis of cervical cancer, such as tumor grade, FIGO staging and metastasis (P > 0.1).