Elevated Risk of HPV-Associated Oropharyngeal Cancers in Husbands of Women With Anogenital Cancer
Related Experiment Video
Updated: Sep 9, 2025

Chromogenic In Situ Hybridization as a Tool for HPV-Related Head and Neck Cancer Diagnosis
Published on: June 14, 2019
Tuomas Lehtinen1, Luayo Zhang2, Kristina Sundquist3,4
1FICAN-Mid, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland.
Introduction:
Human papillomavirus (HPV) infection is associated with tonsillar and base-of-tongue squamous cell carcinomas (TSCC/BOTSCC). We evaluated the relative risk (RR) of TSCC/BOTSCC in the husbands of women with anogenital cancer using the Swedish family database.
Methods:
The Swedish family database includes 3.5 million families and 16 million individuals identified since 1932 and linked to cancer data from 1958 to 2015. We explored the RR of TSCC/BOTSCC in husbands of women diagnosed with anogenital (anal, vulvar/vaginal, cervical) cancer or cervical carcinoma in situ (CIS) as compared to husbands of controls.
Results:
The RR of TSCC/BOTSCC in husbands of women with invasive anogenital cancer increased by calendar time and decreasing ages at diagnoses. In 2002-2015, the RR peaked at 5.35 (95% CI 2.21-13.0) in TSCC/BOTSCC cases diagnosed at age < 50 years. In husbands of women with CIS, the RR for TSCC/BOTSCC was 2-fold irrespective of time period.
Conclusions:
Clustering of increased HPV-associated invasive cancer risk in spouses appears to be calendar-time dependent. This introduces a new perspective in cancer science: an increase of familial HPV-associated cancer risk in spouses.
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10:26RNAscope for In situ Detection of Transcriptionally Active Human Papillomavirus in Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma
Published on: March 11, 2014
07:43Four-color Fluorescence Immunohistochemistry of T-cell Subpopulations in Archival Formalin-fixed, Paraffin-embedded Human Oropharyngeal Squamous Cell Carcinoma Samples
Published on: July 29, 2017
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