P53 Mutation in HPV Positive Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Abstract

Objective: 1) To determine whether p53 protein overexpression and human papillomavirus (HPV) infection coexist in a high- risk Pakistani population. 2) Learn the correlation with smoking, chewing habits, and histological variables such as grade and stage of tumor in these patients. Method: This study is based on samples retrospectively collected from patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) who were diagnosed and treated during the period of January 2009 to December 2010. Ninety-five known HPV-infected OSCC were used as the research material. TP53 protein overexpression was investigated by means of immunohistochemistry. Results: Patient ages ranged from 20 to 78 years with a median of 50 years. Sixty-two patients (65%) were men, and 33 (35%) were women. As expected the majority of the patients exhibited a significant history of smoking and chewing tobacco in different combinations and betel-quid consumption. Out of 95 patients, 19 patients presented with stage I disease; 27 patients with stage II, 29 patients with stage III, and 20 with stage IV disease according to AJCC staging. Out of 95 HPV positive oral squamous cell carcinomas, 50 (53%) were p53 positive and 45 (47%) were p53 negative. Conclusion: This work confirms some previous studies that HPV infection and p53 mutation coexisted in the oral squamous cell carcinoma. However, p53 overexpression was not significantly associated with HPV infection. Nevertheless, further studies with large numbers of cases and detection on premalignant lesions are needed to validate these findings.