Oral rinse used to detect HPV neck cancer

BALTIMORE, Oct. 31 (UPI) -- An oral rinse may be used to detect human papillomavirus-positive, or HPV, head and neck cancers, U.S. researchers said.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore used oral rinses and targeted DNA amplification to track and identify oral HPV infections in patients with HPV16-positive and negative head and neck carcinomas before and after therapy.

The findings, published in the journal Clinical Cancer Research, showed detection of high-risk HPV infections in patients with HPV16-positive head and neck carcinomas for up to five years after therapy.

"There is no question of cause," study co-author Dr. Maura Gillison said in a statement. "It has now become a question of tracking the infection over time to identify those at risk of developing HPV-positive cancer, and for those who have had it, the risk of recurrence and risk of transmission. This is the first study in which we have been able to track the disease and related oral infections for an extended period of time."

Researchers obtained oral rinse samples from a group of 135 patients with head and neck carcinomas. Tissue analysis showed that 44 of these patients had HPV16-positive tumors.

Both the tissue and oral rinse samples were genetically sequenced to specify the HPV variants in each. Patients with HPV16-positive tumors were significantly more likely to have oral HPV16 infections, with an almost ten-fold increase prior to therapy and a fourteen-fold increase after.