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Older age, smoking increased oral HPV viral load
Among individuals with a high-risk HPV infection, older age and current smoking were both independently associated with an increased oral HPV viral load, according to researchers from the National Cancer Institute and The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center.
“Importantly, age and smoking were associated with both increased oral HPV prevalence and high oral HPV viral load independent of sexual behaviors relevant for HPV acquisition, thus underscoring a potential role for alternative factors, perhaps immune-mediated, in the natural history of oral HPV,” the researchers wrote in The Journal of Infectious Diseases. “Longitudinal studies with serial sampling are needed to further investigate factors associated with immune control and persistence of oral HPV infection”
The study was conducted using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2009-2010. Among participants aged 14 to 69 years, 5,501 had provided a 10 mL mouthwash or saline rinse oral sample. The researchers identified 211 participants who were positive for at least one of 18 high-risk HPV types and included in this study, which also included 720 HPV-negative controls to evaluate specificity of viral load assays.
None of the controls had a detectable viral load and the median HPV viral load among the individuals with high-risk HPV was 314 copies per 100,000 cells. The median viral loads differed significantly across HPV types.
Data from a univariate analysis found that older age, male gender and current smoking were associated with a high oral HPV viral load. Unadjusted analyses with continuous viral load measurements showed that increasing age and number of cigarettes per day were associated with increased viral load.
After adjustment for age, sex, marital status, income-to-poverty ratio, smoking and alcohol use, older age and current smoking were significantly associated with increased HPV viral load. All smokers who smoked more than 20 cigarettes a day had a high HPV viral load. In addition, oral HPV viral load was higher among men and also increased with increasing alcohol use.
“These observations extend previous reports by showing that, in addition to associations with increased oral HPV prevalence, older age and smoke are also associated with higher oral HPV viral load,” the researchers wrote.
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.