Different Human Papillomavirus 16/18 Infection in Chinese Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Patients Living in Wuhan, China

Background: Inconsistency in the prevalence of infection by humanpapillomavirus (HPV) in lung cancer patients was found between different countries with racial and geographic variations. Our previous reports have indicated that a high-risk HPV 16/18 DNA was frequently detected in Chinese lung cancer patients living in Taichung, Taiwan (Cheng et al. Cancer Res. 2001;61:2799–803). Thus, we conducted this study to verify whether there was a similar HPV 16/18 infection prevalence in lung cancer patients from Wuhan, China. Methods: To reduce the false positive HPV detection, the paraffin sections of 73 lung tumors and 34 non-cancer controls from Wuhan, China were collected for detection of the presence of HPV 16/18 DNA by in situ hybridization (ISH). Results: Our results showed that the rates of HPV 16 and/or 18 infections in patients with lung tumors were significantly higher than in 34 non-cancer control subjects (26.0 versus 2.8 % for HPV 16,P = 0.030; 23.3 versus 5.7 % for HPV 18,P = 0.031; 27.7 versus 5.9 % for HPV 16 or 18, P = 0.003) with a similar infection frequency of HPV 16 and 18 types in lung tumors. This result indicated that HPV 16/18 infection may be associated with lung cancer development in Chinese patients fromWuhan,China. Further statistical analyses revealed that HPV16 or 18 infectionwa