Addi"ional informa"ion is available a" "he end of "he chap"er h""p://dx.doi.org/10.5772/55710
. IntroductionThe Human Papillomavirus HPV has been shown to play a causative role in anal, head and neck, oral, oropharyngeal, penile, vaginal, vulvar and cervical cancers. The last one is the second most common cancer among women worldwide [ -]. Some types of HPV have been established as the central cause of cervical carcinoma [ -] "cquisition of HPV is very common, particularly among sexually active young adults, and incidence of infection with oncogenic HPV types appears to be higher than the incidence of infection with non-oncogenic types [ ]. Oncogenic HPV types and and history of other concurrent sexually transmitted diseases were found to be significantly associated with progression to cervical cancer [ -].More than HPV types have been identified and about types can infect the genital tract. Worldwide, HPV is the most common high-risk type, present in %, followed by HPV , present in % of cervical cancers [ ]. Same types of HPV were more frequent in malignant than in benign lesions, and infection with high-risk types of HPV is now considered the major risk factor for the development of cancer of the uterine cervix [ ].Thus, the HPV infection is necessary for the development of the cervical cancer. The development of this cancer is considered to be a multistep process, where HPV is necessary but in itself an insufficient cause. Disease can only develop when there is persistent HPV infection of the cervical epithelium [ , ].Cervical cancer is considerate a rare complication of infection with high risk HPV HR-HPV , but every abnormal or dysplastic lesion of the cervix is potentially malignant and may develop into cervical cancer over time. The incidence is highest in developing countries, largely as a © 2013 da Silva Reis e" al.; licensee InTech. This is an open access ar"icle dis"rib""ed "nder "he "erms of "he Crea"ive Commons A""rib""ion License (h""p://crea"ivecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permi"s "nres"ric"ed "se, dis"rib""ion, and reprod"c"ion in any medi"m, provided "he original work is properly ci"ed.result of lack of screening programs and poor access to medical care [ ]. The prevalence of HPV and the distribution of its types probably plays an important role as well. On the other hand, the relationship between others cancer types and HPV-associated is just emerging [ ].The variability in HPV-attributable proportions for non cervical cancers, in part, arises from differences in HPV detection methods across studies as well as from true geographic differences in HPV-attributable proportions [ ]. Despite this variability, %-% of anal cancers, %-% of oropharyngeal cancers, %-. % of penile cancers, %-% of vaginal cancers, and %-% of vulvar cancers are potentially attributable to HPV infection [ -].
