Elsevier

Papillomavirus Research

Volume 10, December 2020, 100207
Papillomavirus Research

No association between HPV-status in tonsillar tissue and sexual behavior of the patients in a northern German population - Critical view of the link between HPV natural history and HPV-driven carcinogenesis

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pvr.2020.100207Get rights and content
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Highlights

  • Questionnaires from 81 TSCC and 25 tonsillar hyperplasia (H) patients were analyzed.

  • No correlation between HPV positivity and sexual behavior was found.

  • HPV positive H had both less sexual partners and oral sex than HPV negatives (trend).

  • In TSCC sexual partners and oral sex were similar irrespective of HPV status.

  • Incongruent data about sexual behavior, HPV transmission and cancer transgression.

Abstract

HPV-infection in patients with HNSCC is reportedly correlated with sexual behavior, age, and tobacco/alcohol-consumption. HPV-infections of the oral cavity are regarded as sexually transmitted. Comparable data of patient populations outside the U.S. are sparse or missing.

Questionnaires regarding sexual behavior, education tobacco- and alcohol-consumption, were given to 28 patients with tonsillar hyperplasia (H) and 128 patients with tonsillar carcinomas (CA), all with tissue-typed HPV-DNA-status performing PCR. Answers were correlated among groups and HPV-status.

106 questionnaires were analyzed. Comparisons between H- (n = 25) and CA- (n = 81) patients showed that CA-patients were older (61.1yrs ± 9.3) than H-patients (45.2yrs ± 11.9; p < 0.0001; Student's t-test); had a lower educational level (p = 0.0095); and lower number of sexual partners (p = 0.0222; Fisher's exact test). All groups showed a significant correlation between smoking and lack of HPV-DNA-positivity (p = 0.001). Further Fisher's exact tests and logistic regression analysis revealed in all 106 patients no significant correlations between tissue-HPV-status and the analyzed parameters.

Despite the limited sample size, we were able to confirm the established correlation between smoking and tissue-HPV-status. The correlation between sexual behavior and HPV-infection was not confirmed. No consensus exists in the literature about the latter. Our data does not support the strict classification of oral HPV-infections and HPV-driven HNSCCs as STDs.

Keywords

HPV
Oral
Sexual behavior
Oral sex
STD
Infection

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1

Authors contributed equally.