Asymptomatic Penile HPV Infection: A Prospective Study

Abstract

The occurrence of human papillomavirus (HPV) among males was analysed with the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method. Penile brush samples were taken once from 147 males attending for a control or for HPV non-related reasons, and consecutive samples were collected from 88 males re-attending the clinic. Of the males attending once, 13% (19/147) were HPV DNA positive and among the re-attenders 14% (12/88) were initially positive as compared with 33% (29/88) who were positive at least at one visit. Totally, 22 different HPV types were detected of which HPV 16 was most common, found in 6.4% (15/235), followed by HPV 42 found in 3.8% (9/235). Among 14 HPV-positive males with at least one follow-up, 7 had persistent infections with at least one HPV type, and transient HPV types were observed in 9; but in 5 of them new types appeared at follow-up. Among sexually-active males subclinical/latent HPV infection is common and repeated sampling increases its prevalence.

Human Papillomavirus Infection in Men Attending a Sexually Transmitted Disease Clinic

“…These data differ greatly from reports of HPV infection in women, in whom oncogenic HPV types, specifically type 16, are more common [31][32][33][34]. In some previous studies on male HPV, the majority of men who tested positive for HPV had oncogenic subtypes [10,12,30], but, in the IARC 5-nation study, unspecified HPV types were most common [16]. In our population, in which we probed for 27 HPV types, the prevalence of unknown HPV types was 5.9%.…”

“…In STD clinics in Greenland and Denmark, HPV prevalence among men was 45%-49%, whereas, in a Swedish STD clinic, HPV prevalence was 13% [12,29,30]. In an international case-control study that investigated the HPV prevalence among the male partners of women with and without cervical cancer, International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) investigators found penile HPV DNA in 3.5%-39.0% of the control husbands and 12.0%-36.0% of husbands of the case patients, with prevalence varying significantly by country [15,16].…”

“…Among studies that have used PCR to detect penile HPV DNA in healthy men, sampling methodologies have been inconsistent. Nonetheless, results from these diverse investigations have suggested that penile HPV in sexually active men is at least as prevalent as cervical HPV is among women [10][11][12][13][14][15].…”

Reactivity to human papillomavirus type 16 L1 virus-like particles in sera from patients with genital cancer and patients with carcinomas at five different extragenital sites

“…The prevalence of subclinical or latent penile HPV infections among young, sexually active and healthy individuals is reported between 20 and 50%, while the incidence of penile carcinoma is relatively low (Van Doornum et al, 1994;Wikström et al, 2000). In penile carcinoma patients from Argentina, HPV DNA was detected in 27 out of 38 (71%) of the cases using single-stranded conformational polymorphism; 10 of the 38 (26.3%) patients were found positive for HPV 16 (Picconi et al, 2000).…”

Prevalencia de la infección genital por virus papiloma humano en hombres universitarios voluntarios de la IX Región, Chile

“…Las técnicas de PCR presentan ventajas frente a la CH II, ya que puede identificar tipos específicos de VPH y diferenciar infecciones por VPH de AR y BR 12 . Para recolectar las células exfoliadas se han utilizado tórulas de algodón, cepillos y papeles abrasivos [13][14][15][16][17] . Las muestras de orina se han usado, pero con resultados deficientes 18,19 .…”