Abstract
BackgroundHuman papillomaviruses (HPV) are oncogenic and mainly associated with cervical cancers. Recent evidence has demonstrated HPV infection in other tissues, including oral epithelia and mucosa. Although a recent pilot study provided new information about oral HPV status in healthy adults from Nevada, no information was obtained about oral HPV prevalence among children or teenagers, therefore, the goal of this study is to provide more detailed information about oral prevalence of high-risk HPV among children and teenagers in Nevada.MethodsThis retrospective study utilized previously collected saliva samples, obtained from pediatric dental clinic patients (aged 2 – 11) and local school district teenagers (aged 12-17) for high-risk HPV screening (n=118) using qPCR for quantification and confirmation of analytical sensitivity and specificity.ResultsA small subset of saliva samples were found to harbor high-risk HPV16 (n=2) and HPV18 (n=1), representing a 2.5% of the total. All three were obtained from teenage males, and two of these three samples were from White participants.ConclusionsAlthough this retrospective study could not provide correlations with behavioral or socioeconomic data, this project successfully screened more than one hundred saliva samples for high-risk HPV, confirming both HPV16 and HPV18 strains were present in a small subset. With increasing evidence of oral HPV infection in children, this study provides critical information of significant value to other dental, medical, oral and public health professionals who seek to further an understanding of oral health and disease risk in pediatric populations.
Highlights
Human papillomaviruses (HPV) are oncogenic and mainly associated with cervical cancers
Based upon the previous evidence demonstrating some level of oral HPV infection in healthy children and adolescents, combined with the lack of data about this population the goal of this current study is to provide more detailed information about prevalence of high-risk HPV strains HPV16 and HPV18 in the oral cavity of children and teenagers in Nevada
Detailed analysis of saliva samples revealed some variability between cell counts, Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) concentration and DNA purity between samples (Figure 1)
Summary
Human papillomaviruses (HPV) are oncogenic and mainly associated with cervical cancers. Despite the conflicting nature of these results, it is clear that HPV may be involved in modulating tumor responsiveness and carcinogenic progression, many of these studies have provided valuable epidemiological information regarding which high-risk HPV strains are most often implicated in these cases [34,35,36]. These studies have revealed HPV16, and HPV18 to a lesser extent, accounted for the overwhelming majority (71-94.7%) of high-risk oral HPV detected [17,18,2123,34-36]. New evidence suggests that these specific high-risk HPV strains (HPV16 and HPV18), may initiate oral carcinogenesis among the smaller fraction of oral cancer patients who do not consume alcohol or use tobacco [37,38]
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