The presence of HPV DNA in breast cancer

Abstract

Introduction and objective. For many years the incidence of breast cancer remained at a high level. There are many risk factors which increase the probability of occurrence of the development of neoplastic transformation. Human papillomavirus has oncogenic properties and many studies have demonstrated its role in malignant transformation of cervical epithelial. These properties seems to be of great importance also in the formation of cancers in different organs. Objective. This study aims to assess the prevalence of HPV genetic material in women with breast cancer, and compare the prevalence of HPV DNA with a control group of women with non-malignant changes in the breast. Material and methods. The biological material to be examined, obtained from 60 patients with breast cancer treated in Centrum Onkologii Ziemi Lubelskiej in Lublin, was fixed in paraffin blocks. The control group consisted of 30 patients with suspected tumour growth; however, the histopathological examination ruled out breast cancer cells. HPV DNA isolation was performed using a DNA Mini-Kit (Qiagen). Amplification and genotyping was carried out using a set of INNO-LIPA HPV Genotyping (Innogenetics) according to the manufacturer's instructions. Results. The genetic material of the virus was detected in 8 women with breast cancer. DNA of HPV was not found in samples from the control group. HPV 16 occurred in 50%. Conclusions. HPV genetic material is present in breast cancer cells. HPV is absent in women with benign breast changes. A positive correlation was found between the presence of the HPV genome and the age of the women: the virus is more common in women aged > 60 years, also noted was the presence of HPV associated with the type of histopathological diagnosis. HPV is significantly more frequent in invasive lobular cancer.

Association of breast cancer with human papillomavirus (HPV) infection in Northeast Brazil: molecular evidence

“…Thus, the likelihood HPV infection decreases with age. A study conducted in Lublin, Poland 15 , with a similar design as ours, demonstrated a direct correlation between the presence of HPV DNA and patient age. In fact, the observation of higher frequency of HPV positivity in younger women has been supported by several studies, which demonstrated an association between HPV infection in younger BC patients and the frequency of their sexual activity 28 , 33 , 34 .…”

“…HPV DNA sequences were first reported in BC samples in 1992 13 . Subsequently, several studies have documented the presence of HPV DNA in BC tissues 12 , 14 , 15 . Despite the emergence of HPV in BC as a major public health issue worldwide, only one previous study has been reported in Brazil; it was conducted in Porto Alegre and found HPV 16 and 18 in 24.5% of the cases 16 .…”

Low frequency of HPV positivity in breast tumors among patients from south-central Poland

“…In relation to the hypothesis about geographical differenattion of HPV presence in breast cancer, it should be noticed that it is in contradiction to the results of our study and other study from from south-west Poland [ 24 ], in which the prevalence of HPV infection was found at the higher level (13.3%) as compared to us. Similarly, contrary results came from other countries, such as: Greece (range 0 [ 12 ]–15.9% [ 35 ]) Italy (range 3.6 [ 31 ]–25.5% [ 36 ]), Spain (range 0 [ 17 ]–51.8% [ 25 ]) or United Kingdom (range 0 [ 21 ]–47.0% [ 37 ]).…”

“…Considering the influence of BC histological type on HPV prevalence, it should be noticed that some authors [ 10 , 24 ] have found higher frequency of HPV positivity in invasive lobular carcinomas (50% [ 24 ] and 100% [ 10 ]) than in invasive ductal carcinomas (8.7% [ 24 ] and 30.0% [ 10 ]), whereas in the current study all tumors were invasive ductal (Table 2 ). In turn, Piana et al [ 34 ], analysing 80 BC, most of which were ductal, have found, similar to us, HPV positivity at relative low level (7.5%).…”

“…It is also worth to noticed that all European studies concerning HPV presence in breast cancer, except one, came from Western Europe. One exception is the Polish study from 2013 [ 24 ], in which HPV prevalence was analysed in 60 FFPE breast cancer tissues and viral presence was found in 8 samples (13.3%). It should be also mentioned that in all above-mentioned European researches the number of analysed BC tissues varied from 11 [ 23 ] to 251 [ 25 ] samples, with median value at the level of 74.…”