[Association between HPV DNA and disease specific survival in patients with penile cancer]

To examine the prevalence of human papilloma virus (HPV) in penile squamous-cell carcinomas (SCCs), explore the relationship between HPV and clinicopathological variables and determine its value for predicting disease-specific survival.

We retrospectively collected clinicopathological data of 28 patients with penile squamous cell carcinomas from 2000 to 2009 at Beijing Cancer Hospital, Beijing Hospital and Peking University People's Hospital. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was used to detect the presence of HPV DNA in tumor specimens. Regular follow-ups were conducted. Disease-specific survival plots were drawn with the Kaplan-Meier method and compared with the Log-Rank test. Cox proportional hazard analysis was applied to assess the independent effects of several prognostic factors on survival.

HPV DNA was detected in 7/28 samples. After sequencing, all 7 samples were confirmed to be HPV-16 type. The median follow-up period was 60 (6-150) months. By the time of analysis, 8/28 patients died. HPV DNA was not significantly associated with age, pathological grading, pathologic T stage or lymph node metastasis (P = 0.191, 0.165, 1.000, 0.639 respectively). Cox multivariate regression analysis indicated that lymph node status (HR = 5.5, P = 0.023) was an independent predictive factor of disease specific survival, followed by pathological T classification (HR = 11.0, P = 0.035) . The 5-year disease-specific survival in patients with HPV DNA positive was higher than that in those with HPV DNA negative (67% vs 58%) . But survival had no significant differences (P = 0.431).

Higher pathologic T stage and lymph node metastasis are independent prognostic factors for worse survival. And mortality does not increase markedly in penile cancer patients with HPV DNA positive.