Study on human papilloma virus infection in endometrium

Objective To investigate human papilloma virus(HPV)infection in normal endometrium,endometrium from the cervical cancer and endometrial carcinoma.Methods By the PCR-based method using L1 modified general primers(GP5+/GP6+)and sequencing of the PCR product,we detected 25 pairs of paraffin-embedded tissues from cervical cancers and 30 pairs from endometrial carcinomas.Both cancer tissues and normal endometrium of each cervical cancer case were collected as one pair.Carcinoma tissues and its normal cervical mucosa from each endometrial carcinoma case were considered as one pair.Normal endometrium and cervical mucosa from 20 patients with uterine myomas were as control.Results ① HPV was detected in 16 cervical cancer tissues and 1 endometrium specimen among the 25 pairs of cervical cancers.This pair of endometrium and cervical cancer tissues both presented positive HPV-16.② No HPV was detected in 30 pairs of specimens from endometrial carcinomas(0/30).③ No HPV-DNA was detected in the controls,neither endometrium nor cervical mucosa(0/20).Conclusions ① HPV being hardly detected in endometrium indicates endometrium is not the suitable host of HPV replication and maturation.② HPV in cervical cancer tissues is likely to up spread from uterine cervix to endometrium,but this is rare.③ HPV infection seems not related to pathogenesis and transformation process of endometrial carcinoma.