The prevalence of human herpesvirus 8 in normal, premalignant, and malignant cervical samples of Iranian women

Regard to this fact that the main transmission route of HPV and HHV-8 is via sexual activity, it is reasonable to speculate that coinfection of HPV and HHV-8 may have been played an important role in the development of cervical cancer. The aim of this study was to estimate the prevalence of HHV-8 and the frequency of HPV and HHV-8 coinfection in cervical samples of patients with cervical cancer and healthy individuals. In total, 364 samples from 61 patients with cervical cancer, 124 women with premalignant lesions, and 179 healthy individuals were investigated by nested-PCR. The frequency of HHV-8 was found to be 22.9%, 17.7%, and 14.5% in cervical cancer, premalignant lesions, and normal specimens, respectively (P = 0.308). The overall prevalence of coinfection between HHV-8 and HPV was shown to be 16.2%. The HPV prevalence was higher in HHV-8 positive samples than HHV-8 negative specimens in all three studied groups and this difference was reached a statistically significant level (P = 0.002). However, no significant differences were found between HHV-8 positivity and HPV genotypes (P = 0.08). Our results showed the higher rate of HHV-8 genome detection in cervical cancer group than control group. However, future studies with larger sample sizes and evaluation of expression of HHV-8 proteins are warranted.