M1973 High Prevalence of Human Papillomavirus in a Spanish Population with Esophageal Cancer

Abstract

Background: Human papillomavirus (HPV) is increasingly recognized as an important etiological factor of esophageal cancer. However, its prevalence is highly variable between different geographic areas, and is also dependent on the different diagnostic tests such as in situ hybridization, southern blot, and polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Aim: To determine the prevalence of HPV in a selected population of esophageal cancer in Catalonia, Spain. Patients and Methods: Consecutive patients diagnosed with esophageal cancer were selected for the study between February 2007 and September 2008. Paired endoscopic biopsy samples were obtained from normal mucosa and tumour and collected in RNA later. Extracted DNA was amplified using F-HPV typingTM kit PCR (Molgentix, Spain) with a set of 24 fluorescently labelled primers recognizing HPV types 6, 11, 16, 18, 26, 31, 33, 35, 39, 42, 43 , 44, 45, 51, 52, 53, 56, 58, 59, 66, 68, 70, 73 and 82. Results: Twenty patients (mean age: 62 ±11, 16 M/ 4 F) diagnosed with 11 squamous cell carcinoma and 9 with esophageal adenocarcinoma participated in the study. HPV was detected in 6 out of 11 patients (54.5 %) with squamous cell carcinoma and in 1 of 9 patients (11.1%) with adenocarcinoma of esophagus. Medium risk HPV types (53, 70, 73) were detected in 5 out of 7 patients in both tumour and the surrounding normal mucosa. Multi-infection with several medium risk HPV types was found in 4 (57%) of them. Low risk VPH 42 was also present in 5/7 (71%) of cancer samples, three in combination with medium risk VPH, one isolated, and the remaining sample had medium risk HPV 73 in the surrounding normal mucosa. Conclusions: HPV is present in 54% of cases of squamous cell carcinoma in our series. The presence of several medium risk HPV is common in both tumor and normal esophageal mucosa samples from these patients.