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. 2023 Aug 1;19(2):2220626.
doi: 10.1080/21645515.2023.2220626. Epub 2023 Jun 9.

Incidence and association of high-risk HPVs and EBV in patients with advanced stages of colorectal cancer from Qatar

Queenie Fernandes  1   2 , Ishita Gupta  1 , Khaled Murshed  3 , Hayan Abo Samra  3 , Hamda Al-Thawadi  1 , Semir Vranic  1 , Mahir Petkar  3 , Giridhara Rathnaiah Babu  1 , Ala-Eddin Al Moustafa  1   4   5
Affiliations

Incidence and association of high-risk HPVs and EBV in patients with advanced stages of colorectal cancer from Qatar

Queenie Fernandes et al. Hum Vaccin Immunother. .

Abstract

High-risk Human Papillomaviruses (HPVs) and Epstein - Barr virus (EBV) are present and involved in several types of human carcinomas, including cervical and, head and neck cancers. Nevertheless, their presence and association in the pathogenesis of colorectal cancer is still nascent. The current study explored the association between the high-risk HPVs and EBV and tumor phenotype in colorectal cancers (CRCs) in the Qatari population. We found that high-risk HPVs and EBV are present in 69/100 and 21/100 cases, respectively. Additionally, 17% of the cases showed a copresence of high-risk HPVs and EBV, with a significant correlation only between the HPV45 subtype and EBV (p = .004). While the copresence did not significantly associate with clinicopathological characteristics, we identified that coinfection with more than two subtypes of HPV is a strong predictor of advanced stage CRC, and the confounding effect of the copresence of EBV in such cases strengthens this association. Our results indicate that high-risk HPVs and EBV can co-present in human CRCs in the Qatari population where they could plausibly play a specific role in human colorectal carcinogenesis. However, future studies are essential to confirm their copresence and synergistic role in developing CRCs.

Keywords: Colorectal cancer; Epstein–Barr virus; Qatar; human papillomavirus; oncoviral coinfection; oncovirus.

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Conflict of interest statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Pie-chart depicting the status of HPV & EBV infection in CRC cases in a Qatari cohort.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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