Background & objective: It is well known that high-risk human papillomavirus (HPV) infection is the major cause of cervical cancer. However, the relation between cervical cancer and high-risk HPV load is uncertain, and there are only a small number of reports studying the correlation between high-risk HPV load and tumor markers. This study was to investigate the correlations of high-risk HPV load to the grade of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN), expression of Ki-67 and p16ink4a in the cervical lesion, and the abnormal cytology after surgery.
Methods: The expression of Ki-67 and p16ink4a in 8 specimens of CINI, 12 specimens of CINII, and 41 specimens of CINIII were detected by immunohistochemistry. All the patients received high-risk HPV load detection using hybrid captureII (HCII) before operation and were followed up afterwards.
Results: The high-risk HPV load was positively correlated to the CIN grade and expression of Ki-67 and p16ink4aû with correlation coefficients of 0.288, 0.318, and 0.336, respectively (P<0.05). After a mean follow-up of 18.5 months, 6 patients were found abnormal cytological smears again, whose HPV loads were over 100 RLU/ PC before operation. Five out of the 6 patients had the HPV loads between 100 to 1000 RLU/ PC before operation and the remaining one had the HPV load of over 1000 RLU/PC. However, no statistical differences were observed among the 3 groups of different viral loads (<100 RLU/PC, 100 to <1 000 RLU/PC, > or =1 000 RLU/PC). Age, parity, CIN grades, expression of p16ink4a and Ki-67 had no predictive significance for the abnormal cytology after operation.
Conclusions: The high-risk HPV load has positive correlation to the progression of cervical lesion and increased malignancy of cells. Although the high-risk HPV load have no relation to the abnormal cytology after operation, patients with the viral load of over 100 RLU/PC should be paid more attention.