Role of the Human Papillomavirus Infection in Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Background and Objective: Human papillomavirus (HPV) is one of the possible etiologic factors in development of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC). In this study we aimed to study the role of HPV in ESCC. Patients and Methods: In this study, 140 cases of ESCC were analyzed for the HPV DNA by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) using GP5+/GP6+ primers for L1 open reading frame (ORF) to amplify a 150-bp segment of HPV L1 ORF. This region was subsequently sequenced to identify the type of HPV. Results: A total of 140 patients enrolled in our study. In this respect, 50.7% of them were females and 49.3% were males, aged between 20 and 81 years old. In addition, 33 tumor specimens (23.6%) and 12 (8.6%) non-involved tumor margins were HPV positive. In HPV positive tumor cases, 36% were also positive in tumor margins. The HPV positive cases were 21.7% males and 25.3% females. There was no correlation between the presence and types of HPV with patients’ sex and age. The frequency of HPV subtypes in tumoral regions were as follow: HPV-16: 60.6%, HPV-18: 30.3%, HPV-33: 6.1%, and HPV-31: 3 %. We found only HPV-16 in tumor margins. Conclusion: Our results support a causal association between HPV infection and ESCC which is consistent with HPV studies conducted in other high-risk areas.