Журнал клинической и медицинской геномики

Relationship between Human Papillomavirus and Tumor Markers Expression among Women in Two Tertiary Hospitals in Bayelsa State, Nigeria

Abstract

Oboma YI, Ngokere AA and Elesha SO

Cervical Human Papillomavirus (HPV) infection in sub-Saharan Africa is among the highest in the world. HPV early proteins (E6 and E7) cause inhibition of p53 and Rb proteins respectively which are important for cell transformation. The HPV screening can be achieve using various methods like polymerase chain reaction, immunohistochemistry/ immunocytochemistry and Hybrid Capture 1/2. This study aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of some tumor markers in detecting cervical human Papillomavirus in HPV positive confirmed tissues by PCR. Fifty cervical tissue samples were subjected to nested polymerase chain reaction technique for the detection of HPV and immunohistochemistry method was used to localized and identify p53, p16 and Ki-67 antibodies. Result revealed 35(70%) expression for p16, 34(68%) for Ki-67 and 32(64%) for p53 marker in the tissue blocks studied. Nondysplastic cases expressed 62% for p16, 25% and 75% for Ki-67 and p53 respectively. Squamous Cell Carcinoma (SCC) and adenocarcinoma of the cervix showed 100 % expression for p16 gene, followed by p53 (91.6%) and Ki-67 (83.3%). Relationship between immunohistochemistry markers expression and cervical HPV using PCR was studied. Data obtained showed a 100% expression for p16, 53.8 % for Ki-67 and 30.8% for p53 tumor markers in all the HPV positive cases. HPV negative cases presented 59.5%, 67.6% and 81.7% expression for p16, Ki-67 and p53 respectively. All HPV positive cases showed statistically significant increase expression for p16 tumor marker compared with Ki-67 (P<0.001*OR=23.40) and p53 (P<0.001**, OR=41.73). These findings could be linked to retinoblastoma involvement in HPV infection which is the principle behind p16 staining reaction and therefore concluded that all HPV positive cases are p16 positive but not all p16 positive are HPV positive. We recommend p16 tumor marker as complementary test for HPV screening in poor resource centers.