Identification of human papilloma virus (hpv) in the oral cavity of asymptomatic colombian men

Abstract

HPV infection is currently associated with the risk of lesions in the oral cavity and the oropharynx and has been recognized as a possible etiologic agent of a set of head and neck cancers. However, the detection of HPV in healthy individuals is rare, and little is known about the HPV types present in the oral cavity. A variety of sampling methods has been proposed to increase the sensitivity of viral detection, mostly intended to detect HPV in the oropharynx. Here we estimated the prevalence of HPV in 66 samples of healthy mucosa from the oral cavity of Colombian sexually active men using a liquid-based cytology strategy for sample collection. Generic HPV detection was performed by PCR using a fragment of the β-globin gene as a quality control for the isolated DNA. Type-specific detection was performed with the commercial linear array technique (Roche, USA). All oral samples were positive for β-globin gene. Overall HPV prevalence was 4.5% (3/66); one sample corresponded to HPV16, another was genotyped as HPV11 and the third could not be genotyped and was classified as undetermined. The prevalence of HPV in the oral cavity of asymptomatic men is consistent with that reported worldwide for oropharyngeal cáncer. Despite the small sample size, this is the first study that detected HPV in the healthy oral cavity of Colombian men.