Association of Relative Telomere Length and Risk of High Human Papillomavirus Load in Cervical Epithelial Cells

Abstract

Importunate high-risk HPV (HR-HPV) infection is the most common trigger for the cervical carcinogenesis process. In this respect, the presence of cancer can be imputed to telomere lengthening or shortening. This paper explores the possible correlation between relative telomere length and viral load in two groups of women, namely: those with high-risk HPV infection and those who do not have this infection. Thus, samples comprising of 50 women in each group were evaluated for this research. The Amplisens HPV HCR screen-titre-FRT PCR kite was employed for quantitative analysis. Relative telomere length was quantified by real-time PCR. In each of the two HPV load groups, there was no correlation between age and telomere length. Telomere shortening was found in the cervical cell samples of women with high HPV loads, compared with women in the control group. Telomere shortening is associated with elevated HPV loads.

Keywords: Cervical cancer; Human papillomavirus; Real-time PCR; Telomere; Viral load.

Figure 1

The prevalence of high-risk HPV types in HPV-positive women.

Figure 2

Relative telomere length in control and HPV-positive women. Data are shown as box plots which represent a five-number summary of the data (the minimum, lower quartile, median, upper quartile, and maximum). A small circle indicates an outlier sample.