Objective: To evaluate prognostic significance of HPV-status in cervical cancer and to compare that with the prognostic significance of lymph-node status.
Methods: Cervical cancer biopsy specimens from primaries and, in surgical cases, from pelvic lymph-nodes too were analysed for the presence of human papillomavirus type 16 DNA-sequences using PCR technique. The management of surgical cases with two exceptions included Wertheim's hysterectomy predominantly with preoperative local radiotherapy and also with postoperative local and external beam radiotherapy depending on the histology. Non-surgical cases were treated with combined local and external radiotherapy to pelvic fields.
Results: Patients have been followed up for an average of 37 months after treatment ranging between 0 and 102 months. The mean progression-free survival time of surgical and non-surgical cases were 43 and 28 months, respectively. Patients with HPV-16 positive biopsies from the cervical primary had an average progression-free survival of 37 months, the same as those with HPV-16 negative cervical biopsies. Those patients who were found to carry HPV-16 DNA in their surgically removed pelvic lymph-nodes had an average of 27 months progression-free survival. The mean progression-free survival among histologically node-positive and node-negative surgical cases were 23 and 42 months, respectively. The mean progression-free survival time of node-positive cases with HPV-16 positive cervical primary was 7.5 months while that of patients with HPV-16 negative cervical biopsy was 38 months. Among histologically node-negative patients, HPV-16 positive and negative cases had an average progression-free survival time of 38 and 46 months, respectively.
Conclusions: Among those under investigation the most important factors to predict progression-free survival were surgically amenable disease, histologically negative pelvic lymph-nodes and HPV-16 negative cervical biopsies, though this latter one proved significant only among surgical cases.