The characteristics of HPV integration in cervical intraepithelial cells

Cervical cancer is one of the most common malignant tumors in gynecology. Deploying HIVID, a cost-effective technique to detect HPV integration sites, our team had studied the characteristics of HPV integrations in cervical exfoliated cells. Our results indicated that both the sample proportion and the number of HPV integrations gradually increased following the development of cervical lesion. Meanwhile, our data also revealed that there were recurrent genes integrated by HPV in cervical exfoliated cells. Collectively, the HPV integration breakpoints were highly enriched in the intron and promoter regions. Intriguingly, the gene pathway analysis indicated that the HPV-integrated genes were strongly inclined to pathways of metabolism of xenobiotics by cytochrome P450, chemical carcinogenesis and steroid hormone biosynthesis. In conclusion, this study unveiled the HPV integration patterns and the associated recurrent genes in cervical epithelial exfoliated cells. Altogether, our data suggested that the HPV integrations in cervical exfoliated cells might have vital clinical significance, and probably also diagnostic and/or prognostic values in future clinical applications.