Abstract 5585: Analysis of saliva samples from healthy adults in north central Florida for human papillomavirus infection

Background: Prevalence rates of healthy adults shedding HPV in their saliva have varied depending on the socio-economical status of the subjects. We hypothesize that samples collected from high-poverty and low-education areas of North Central Florida will have a high prevalence of HPV positive subjects. From published studies, we would expect an infection rate of 2-10% with male and female rates being similar. Methods: Through health fairs in North Central Florida, we consented and collected saliva from 148 healthy adults. Of the 148 study samples, 64% were between age 18-60 and 22% were above age 60. 32% of the saliva samples were from males and 68% were from females. Dividing the saliva samples by race, we had 41% white, 51% African American. DNA was isolated from the saliva samples and PCR was used to amplify HPV-specific DNA. Degenerate PCR primers were used for the PCR and sequencing the amplicons. All DNA samples were coded so the investigators do not know the identity of the samples until completion of all experiments. Results: We optimized the degenerate primer sets, MY09/MY11 and GP5+/GP6+, for magnesium concentration and annealing temperature. In addition we optimized a nested PCR using the degenerate primers to increase the sensitivity of HPV detection. From our direct DNA sequence analysis, we identified 10/148 (7%) HPV-positive samples. HPV-types found include: 16, 12, 32, 38, 61, 83, 72, 90, and 110. The inclusion of the primer set GP5+/GP6+ with MY09/11 resulted in an increase of total HPV-positivity from 5% to 7% and the detection of high-risk HPV types 32 and 90. Of the HPV-positive saliva samples, 9% were from 18-60 year old healthy adults and 3% were from over 60-year old adults. Adult females had a similar infection rate as adult males, 7% vs. 6%. Upon comparing race, African Americans were slightly more likely to be infected than whites, 7% vs. 5%. Of the 10 adults with detectable virus in their saliva, 70% were of the high risk HPV type. Conclusion: Our sample size was small but showed an overall infection rate of healthy adults to be similar to rates found in other studies. In our study, male and females had similar infection rates. The age 60 and younger group were found to be three times more likely to be infected than the older than age 60 group. We found no significant difference between race in our study. Citation Format: Michelle M. Hwang, Hyun-Ji Choi, Taimour Y. Langaee, Henrietta L. Logan, Kevin P. Raisch. Analysis of saliva samples from healthy adults in north central Florida for human papillomavirus infection. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 106th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2015 Apr 18-22; Philadelphia, PA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2015;75(15 Suppl):Abstract nr 5585. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2015-5585