1. Co-Incidence of Epstein–Barr Virus and High-Risk Human Papillomaviruses in Cervical Cancer of Syrian Women
- Author
-
Hamda Al-Thawadi, Lina Ghabreau, Tahar Aboulkassim, Amber Yasmeen, Semir Vranic, Gerald Batist, and Ala-Eddin Al Moustafa
- Subjects
0301 basic medicine ,Cancer Research ,cervical cancer ,viruses ,pathology_pathobiology ,medicine.disease_cause ,lcsh:RC254-282 ,Virus ,Metastasis ,Epstein–Barr virus ,03 medical and health sciences ,0302 clinical medicine ,Medicine ,Genotyping ,Original Research ,Cervical cancer ,Tissue microarray ,business.industry ,Cancer ,virus diseases ,medicine.disease ,lcsh:Neoplasms. Tumors. Oncology. Including cancer and carcinogens ,cancer phenotype ,030104 developmental biology ,Oncology ,high-risk human papillomaviruses ,Syrian women ,030220 oncology & carcinogenesis ,Cancer research ,business ,Oncovirus - Abstract
Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) has been recently shown to be co-present with high-risk human papillomaviruses (HPVs) in human cervical cancer; thus, these oncoviruses play an important role in the initiation and/or progression of this cancer. Accordingly, our group has recently viewed the presence and genotyping distribution of high-risk HPVs in cervical cancer in Syrian women; our data pointed out that HPVs are present in 42/44 samples (95%). Herein, we aim to explore the co-prevalence of EBV and high-risk HPVs in 44 cervical cancer tissues from Syrian women using polymerase chain reaction, immunohistochemistry, and tissue microarray analyses. We found that EBV and high-risk HPVs are co-present in 15/44 (34%) of the samples. However, none of the samples was exclusively EBV-positive. Additionally, we report that the co-expression of LMP1 and E6 genes of EBV and high-risk HPVs, respectively, is associated with poorly differentiated squamous cell carcinomas phenotype; this is accompanied by a strong and diffuse overexpression of Id-1 (93% positivity), which is an important regulator of cell invasion and metastasis. These data imply that EBV and HPVs are co-present in cervical cancer samples in the Middle East area including Syria and their co-presence is associated with a more aggressive cancer phenotype. Future investigations are needed to elucidate the exact role of EBV and HPVs cooperation in cervical carcinogenesis. We would like to thank Mrs. A. Kassab for her critical reading of the manuscript. This work was supported by Qatar University grants # GCC-2017-002 QU/KU and QUCG-CMED-2018\2019-3.
- Published
- 2018