A Marker for High-Mortality Cervical Cancer

A study has found that a strain of human papillomavirus (HPV) called HPV 18 appears to be associated with a cervical cancer mortality rate that is nearly double that of other HPV-related cervical cancers. The study, conducted by researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (Seattle, WA, USA), was reported in the March issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

The study involved 399 women with invasive cervical cancer at various stages, who were followed for more than four years on average. While most of the women tested positive for HPV 16, the most common strain linked to cervical cancer, about 20% of the women had tumors related to HPV 18. Adjusting for age, cancer stage, and histologic type, the risk of dying from cervical cancer was increased two-fold for patients whose tumors contained HPV 18 DNA compared to those whose tumors contained HPV 16 DNA. The mechanisms that cause HPV 18 to be associated with poor prognosis are unknown.

The research confirms several previous, smaller studies suggesting that HPV 18 may be an excellent molecular tumor marker for predicting the prognosis of women diagnosed with early-stage cervical cancer. Women whose cervical tumors are found to harbor HPV 18 could be treated more aggressively in the beginning and monitored more frequently during treatment.

"What is needed now is a trial to see if measuring the presence of HPV 18 in the tumors of cervical cancer patients makes a difference in clinical outcomes in terms of using this information to make treatment or monitoring decisions,” said Stephen Schwartz, Ph.D., an associate member of the Hutchinson Center's Public Health Sciences Division.




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