<a name="home"></a>Infection with human papillomaviruses of sexual partners of women having cervical intraepithelial neoplasia

Abstract

Epidemiological studies show that human papillomaviruses (HPV) are strongly related to cervical cancer and cervical intraepithelial neoplasias (CIN). Unlike the case for women, there are no consistent data on the natural history of HPV in the male population even though these viruses are prevalent in males. We carried out a prospective study to assess the prevalence of HPV in males as well as the factors that determine such infections in 99 male sexual partners of women with CIN. The genitalia of the males were physically examined and subjected to peniscopy for the collection of scrapings which were subjected to the polymerase chain reaction and restriction fragment length polymorphism to detect HPV. Of the 99 males sampled, 54 (54.5%) were positive for HPV DNA, 24% of whom presented normal peniscopy, 28% presented evident clinical lesions and 48% isolated lesions consistent with subclinical infection. In the HPV-negative group, 53% showed normal peniscopy, 4% presented evident clinical lesions and 42% isolated lesions consistent with subclinical infection. The study detected a statistically significant association (P < 0.02, Pearson chi-square test) between HPV infection and both the mean number of sexual partners which a male had during his life and the mean number of sexual partners in the year prior to testing. Viral types 6 and 11 were most frequently encountered. The study shows that infection with HPV was frequent in male sexual partners of women with CIN.

Human Papillomavirus (Hpv) Infection of Sexual Partners of Women Presenting Cervical Intraepithelial Neoplasia

“…Paesi et al (2003) carried out a prospective study with couples, among which, women presented CIN III and the prevalent HPV types were 16 and 18, similar to our data. On the other hand, Rombaldi et al (2006) found types 6 and 11 prevailing in couples, although the population studied presented heterogeneous diagnoses in cytopathology, with both males and females presenting with lesions ranging from condylomatous to severe CIN.…”

“…Rombaldi et al (2006) described a rate of infection of 62.6% in male partners of CIN women, with an average age of 30.7 years old.…”

HPV Model: From Gender Medicine to Healthcare of the Couple

“…Until now, only a few studies analyzed the characteristics of HPV infection in men and within heterosexual couples [8,34]. Irrespective of the population studied, the results of all analyses shows high rates of acquisition of HPV infection in men, ranging from 35% to 76% [9,16,35]. This high variability is often due to the criteria of enrolment.…”

“…HC2 detects 13 oncogenic HPV types (16,18,31,33,35,39,45, 51, 52, 56, 58, 59 and 68) and 5 non-oncogenic HPV types (6,11,42,43,44). HC2 reactions as chemiluminescent signal were read by the offline luminometer system (Digene Microplate Luminometer DML 2000), which provided relative quantification of each individual sample compared to the mean of a series of positive controls containing 1 pg/ml of HPV DNA (corresponding to ~100,000 HPV-16 genomes/ml or 5,000 HPV copies per reaction).…”

“…10 μL of male specimens were then tested by GP5+/6+ PCR (Ampliquality HPV HS BIO, variant Single Step; Ab Analitica, Padua, Italy) that amplify a broad spectrum of HPV genotypes by targeting a 150-bp fragment within the L1 open reading frame (ORF) of the HPV genome. All PCR products were genotyped, regardless of gel result, by reverse-line blot hybridization for the detection of 12 high-risk HPV types (16,18,31,33,35,39,45, 51, 52, 56, 58, and 59), 7 uncertain-risk HPV types (26,53,66,68,70,73, and 82), and 10 low-risk HPV types (6,11,40,42,43,44,54,61,72, and 81) according to the manufacturer's instructions (Ampliquality HPV type; Ab Analitica, Padua, Italy). PCR result defined HPV-DNA status for each patient.…”