Most, but not all, cervical adenocarcinomas of usual type contain HPV, but those of unusual morphological type are almost always HPV-negative. This has implications for the efficacy of HPV vaccination in the prevention of cervical adenocarcinoma. A significant proportion of cervical adenocarcinomas are p16-positive in the absence of HPV, illustrating that in these neoplasms diffuse p16 immunoreactivity is not a reliable surrogate marker of the presence of high-risk HPV.

No abstract

The prevalence of HPV 16 and/or 18 was high in all UK countries and highest in those diagnosed at a younger age. The UK is well placed to monitor the impact of HPV vaccination on type-specific HPV prevalence in cervical disease.

Assessment of Human papillomavirus (HPV) prevalence and genotype distribution is important for monitoring the impact of prophylactic HPV vaccination. This study aimed to demonstrate the HPV genotypes predominating in pre‐malignant and cervical cancers in Northern Ireland (NI) before the vaccination campaign has effect. Formalin fixed paraffin embedded tissue blocks from 2,303 women aged 16–93 years throughout NI were collated between April 2011 and February 2013. HPV DNA was amplified by PCR and HPV genotyping undertaken using the Roche® linear array detection kit. In total, 1,241 out of 1,830 eligible samples (68.0%) tested positive for HPV, with the majority of these [1,181/1,830 (64.5%)] having high‐risk (HR) HPV infection; 37.4% were positive for HPV‐16 (n = 684) and 5.1% for HPV‐18 (n = 93). HPV type‐specific prevalence was 48.1%, 65.9%, 81.3%, 92.2%, and 64.3% among cervical intraepithelial neoplasias (CIN) Grades I–III, squamous cell carcinomas (SCC) and adenocarcinoma (AC) cases, respectively. Most SCC cases (81.3%) had only one HPV genotype detected and almost a third (32.0%) of all cervical pathologies were HPV negative including 51.9% of CIN I (n = 283), 34.1% CIN II (n = 145), 18.7% of CIN III (n = 146), 7.8% of SCC (n = 5), and 35.7% of AC (n = 5) cases. This study provides important baseline data for monitoring the effect of HPV vaccination in NI and for comparison with other UK regions. The coverage of other HR‐HPV genotypes apart from 16 and 18, including HPV‐45, 31, 39, and 52, and the potential for cross protection, should be considered when considering future polyvalent vaccines. J. Med. Virol. 88:1262–1270, 2016. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The prevalence of HPV and EBV in EAC is low compared with other viral-associated cancers, but may have been hampered by small sample sizes and detection methods susceptible to fixation processes. Additional research with adequate sample sizes and high-quality detection methods is required.