Urinary bladder carcinoma and human papilloma virus infection, an appraisal of risk

Human papilloma virus (HPV) is a well known risk factor for cancer development in different body sites, involved in the pathogenesis of several intraepithelial lesions and cancers, for example of the upper alimenatry and respiratory tracts and cervix. Urinary bladder carcinoma is a common urological malignancy for which a relationship with human HPV has been indicated, but the results are controversial. Here, the author performed an appraisal of the previous reports on the studies to document correlation between HPV infection, defined as DNA positive, and urinary bladder carcinoma. According to the literature review, 5 reports were recruited for metanalysis, including 239 cases and 52 healthy subjects. The overall HPV DNA positive rates for the patients and healthy control subjects were 25.5 % (61/239) and 11.5 % (6/52), respectively, the odds ratio of 2.6 pointing to potential as a risk factor.