No Association Between HPV-status in Tonsillar Tissue and Sexual Behavior of the Patients in a Northern German Population - Critical View of the Link Between HPV Natural History and HPV-driven Carcinogenesis

Overview

Journal Papillomavirus Res

Specialties Microbiology
Oncology

Date 2020 Sep 24

PMID 32971320

Citations 5

Authors

Elgar Susanne Quabius

Asita Fazel

Christopher Knieling

Stephan Gebhardt

Martin Laudien

Crystal Moore

Andre Kuhnel

Florian Hoppe

Robert Mlynski

Alessa Heinrichs

Alexander Fabian

Markus Hoffmann

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

HPV-infection in patients with HNSCC is reportedly correlated with sexual behavior, age, and tobacco/alcohol-consumption. HPV-infections of the oral cavity are regarded as sexually transmitted. Comparable data of patient populations outside the U.S. are sparse or missing. Questionnaires regarding sexual behavior, education tobacco- and alcohol-consumption, were given to 28 patients with tonsillar hyperplasia (H) and 128 patients with tonsillar carcinomas (CA), all with tissue-typed HPV-DNA-status performing PCR. Answers were correlated among groups and HPV-status. 106 questionnaires were analyzed. Comparisons between H- (n = 25) and CA- (n = 81) patients showed that CA-patients were older (61.1yrs ± 9.3) than H-patients (45.2yrs ± 11.9; p < 0.0001; Student's t-test); had a lower educational level (p = 0.0095); and lower number of sexual partners (p = 0.0222; Fisher's exact test). All groups showed a significant correlation between smoking and lack of HPV-DNA-positivity (p = 0.001). Further Fisher's exact tests and logistic regression analysis revealed in all 106 patients no significant correlations between tissue-HPV-status and the analyzed parameters. Despite the limited sample size, we were able to confirm the established correlation between smoking and tissue-HPV-status. The correlation between sexual behavior and HPV-infection was not confirmed. No consensus exists in the literature about the latter. Our data does not support the strict classification of oral HPV-infections and HPV-driven HNSCCs as STDs.

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