Abstract
The presence of human papillomavirus (HPV) was successfully analyzed by both general and type-specific HPV PCR in 103 samples from 115 patients diagnosed with oral and oropharyngeal cancer in Greece during the years 1986-2007. Results: In total 13/103 (13%) tumours were HPV-positive and the majority of these were HPV-16-positive. Of the tonsillar cancer samples, 12/28 (43%) were HPV-positive and, notably, 1/6 (17%) collected between 1992-1998 and 11/22 (50%) collected between 2000-2007 were HPV-positive. Of the tongue cancer samples, 1/38 (3%) were HPV-positive, while none of the 41 oral cavity cancer samples was HPV-positive. Conclusion: Almost half of all the Greek tonsillar cancer patients had HPV in their tumours, with HPV-16 as the dominant type, and a tendency towards an increase in the proportion of HPV tumours was observed when comparing the percentage of HPV-positive tumours collected between 1992-1998 with those collected between 2000-2007.
Footnotes
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↵* Both authors contributed equally to this study.
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↵** Professor Konstantinos Banis was the coordinator of the study at the Metaxas Cancer Hospital.
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*** Professor Tina Dalianis was the coordinator of the study at the Karolinska Institutet.
- Received February 4, 2008.
- Revision received April 23, 2008.
- Accepted April 30, 2008.
- Copyright© 2008 International Institute of Anticancer Research (Dr. John G. Delinassios), All rights reserved