Carcinogenic ability quantification of human papilloma virus subtypes in eastern China

Human papilloma virus (HPV) infection is a precursor of cervical cancer. This study aimed to introduce a method to quantify the risk of cervical cancer resulting from infection by different HPV subtypes, to help guide patient treatment. Nucleic acid molecule flow-through hybridization and gene chip technology were used to test 6,510 non-cervical cancer healthy volunteers (≤CIN-I) and 204 cervical cancer patients (≥CIN-III) from Dongying City for 21 HPV subtypes (HPV-16, 18, 31, 33, 35, 39, 45, 51, 52, 56, 58, 59, 68, 6, 11, 42, 43, 44, 53, 66 and CP8304) in exfoliated cervical cells. The positive proportion of HPV subtypes was calculated, excluding or including patients with multiple subtype infections. The lower (L) and upper (H) limits of the carcinogenic risk score range were calculated, respectively. The values of carcinogenic index ± uncertainty in the carcinogenic ability (CI ± U) were also calculated. CI = (H + L)/2 represents the carcinogenic risk of the different subtypes, and U =(H - L)/2 represents the probability of each subtype being present in multiple infections. Infection rates were 15.87 and 96.57%, and HPV subtypes with high infection rates were HPV-16, 52, 58, 33, 18, and 31 and HPV-16, 31, 58, 18, 68, and 33 in the non-cervical cancer and cervical cancer groups, respectively. HPV subtypes with high risk of cervical cancer were HPV-31 (3.71 ± 0.68), 51 (2.65 ± 0.44), 18 (2.03 ± 0.43), 68 (1.76 ± 0.40), 58 (1.68 ± 0.49), and 16 (1.39 ± 0.33). We have provided a quantitative method for expressing HPV subtype carcinogenic risk.