• 10/5/2006
  • Washingoton, D.C.
  • Carole Fakhry et al.
  • J. Clin. Microbiol. doi:10.1128/JCM.01321-06

Human Papillomavirus (HPV) is an etiologic agent for both oropharyngeal and cervical cancers, and yet, little is known about the interrelationship between oral and cervical HPV infection. Therefore, we compared the prevalence and type distribution of oral and cervical HPV infection and evaluated infection concordance in a cross-sectional study within the Womens’ Interagency HIV Study (WIHS) cohort.

Oral rinse and cervical vaginal lavage samples were concurrently collected from a convenience sample of 172 HIV-positive and 86 HIV-negative women. HPV genomic DNA was detected by PGMY09/11 L1 consensus primer PCR and type specified by reverse line blot hybridization for 37 HPV types and B-globin. Only 26 of the 35 HPV types found to infect the cervix were also found within the oral cavity, and the type distribution for oral HPV infections appeared distinct from that for cervical infections ( p<0.001). Oral HPV infections were less common than cervical infections for both HIV-positive (25.2% vs. 76.9%, p<0.001) and HIV-negative (9.0% vs. 44.9%, p<0.001) women. Oral HPV infections were more common among women with a cervical HPV infection (25.5% vs. 7.9%, p=0.002).

The majority of women (207, 93.7%) did not have a simultaneous oral and cervical infection by the same HPV type, however, the number of women who did (14, 6.3%) was significantly greater than would be expected by chance (p=0.0002). Therefore, the oral and cervical reservoirs for HPV infection are likely not entirely independent of one another.

Authors:
Carole Fakhry, Gypsyamber D’souza, Elizabeth Sugar, Kathleen Weber, Eleni Goshu, Howard Minkoff, Rodney Wright, Eric Seaberg, and Maura Gillison

Authors’ affiliation:
Johns Hopkins Medicine; Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health; The CORE Center at John H. Stroger Jr Hospital of Cook County; Maimonides Medical Center; Albert Einstein College of Medicine