Abstract
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the survival of patients with SCC of the oropharynx, according to the presence of HPV and tobacco consumption. A total of 37 patients were followed up for at least 5 years after being diagnosed with SCC of the oropharynx. The biopsy tissue was submitted to the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and in situ hybridization (ISH) methods for broad determination of HPV presence, to identify the presence of high-risk viruses (16 and 18). 12 of the 37 (32.4%) samples were HPV positive, whereas the two specific types of virus were identified in two samples for HPV-16 and in no samples for HPV-18. We observed no significant effect of the virus in survival analysis, irrespective of tobacco consumption. The level of tobacco consumption was significantly higher in the group of HPV-negative patients (P = 0.0283), in which all the patients in this group were smokers. Therefore, HPV did not change the survival of patients with SCC of the oropharynx in this study, indicating that factors other than tobacco need to be studied in conjunction with it, and the level of tobacco consumption is significantly higher in the group of HPV-negative patients.
Highlights
Considering that the etiological factors most correlated with the development of squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) of the head and neck are tobacco and alcohol consumption, this study evaluated the isolated and associated effect of these two carcinogens, showing that alcohol does not act in an isolated manner, as does tobacco, but the interaction of these habits presents a significant effect on the formation of the tumors [1]
By means of investigating the two specific types of HPV (16 and 18), two samples (16.6%) were positive for HPV-16 and no sample was positive for HPV-18
The level of tobacco consumption was high in the group evaluated (91.9%), but this habit was significantly higher in the HPV-negative than in HPV-positive patients (P = 0.0283)
Summary
Considering that the etiological factors most correlated with the development of squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) of the head and neck are tobacco and alcohol consumption, this study evaluated the isolated and associated effect of these two carcinogens, showing that alcohol does not act in an isolated manner, as does tobacco, but the interaction of these habits presents a significant effect on the formation of the tumors [1]. When patients do not smoke and do not drink, infection by high-risk HPV is the predominant etiological factor for the development of SCC of the head and heck, which corresponds to around 10–20% of the cases [2, 3]. The prevalence of HPV in these patients shows considerable differences from one study to another, whereas HPV has been found in 32% [9], 63.8% [4], and 81.3% [10] of the cases. When viral typing was performed, the articles indicated that HPV type 16 was the most prevalent [4, 7, 9,10,11]
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