Human papillomavirus not found in squamous and large cell lung carcinomas by polymerase chain reaction

Abstract

Background. Human papillomavirus (HPV) has been identified not only in anogenital carcinomas, but also in malignancies of other organs, including bronchogenic carcinomas. Previous studies reporting detection of these viruses in lung cancers used mainly in situ hybridization. The authors applied the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for investigating the occurrence of HPV in bronchial neoplasms. Methods. Formalin fixed, paraffin embedded tissues of 40 squamous and 7 large cell lung cancers were examined. PCR was done with consensus primers, capable of detecting HPV 6, 11, 16, 18, 31, 33, 52b, and 58. Results. None of the 47 samples contained any of the examined HPV types. Conclusions. Because the squamous and large cell cancer cases were found not to be associated with HPV infection, this study does not support the potential role of these viruses in the development of lung cancers. Cancer 1994; 73:2740–4.

Detection of human papilloma virus (HPV) and K-ras mutations in human lung carcinomas

“…The rate of positivity varied between 4.2% and 31% (19)(20)(21), while in carcinomas with condylomatous changes the rate was higher (42%) (20). In contrast other investigators reported absence of HPV in lung cancer (37,38), this divergence may be due to the differences in the sensitivity and specificity of the methods applied, as well as to epidemio-logical factors. In the current study we confirm the presence of HPV in lung carcinomas, using primers from both the E6 and LI ORFs.…”

No Causal Association Identified for Human Papillomavirus Infections in Lung Cancer

“…First, despite extensive efforts taken to avoid contamination and following a stringent definition for HPV DNA positivity, we observed that 28 lung tumors consistently tested positive for the same type (of the 48 initial positives, nearly 58%). The high proportion of false positivity may explain the large variation in HPV DNA prevalence reported within the same country, such as the observed range of 0% to 78% in Japan (33,34) and 12% to 55% in China (35,36). Second, some of the regional difference in HPV prevalence has been attributed to varying proportions of nonsmoking women and lung histologies (37).…”

Frequent presence of incomplete HPV16 E7 ORFs in lung carcinomas: Memories of viral infection

“…In our study, the presence of the complete HPV16 E7 reading frame was initially investigated using primers employed in studies for cervical specimens. [51][52][53] Since the results from this assay were negative, as observed in previous studies, we tested two additional sets of internal primers for HPV16 E7 detection in lung carcinomas. These primers were designed to eliminate complex conformational structures formed at the 5 end of singlestranded E7 sequence during the annealing step (not shown), which might inhibit amplification particularly when the viral burden is low.…”