Assessment of the Relationship between Human Papilloma Virus Infections and Cutaneous Squamous Cell Carcinoma

The relationship between HPV infection and skin squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) development in immunocompetent individuals is unclear. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to assess the association between HPV infection and skin SCC.
HPV DNA prevalence was evaluated in the paraffin embedded specimens of 70 immunocompetent patients, of which 35 patients had skin SCC and 35 had normal skin. PCR technique and GP6/5 primers were utilized for HPV DNA detection.
Based on this study, 14.3% of the cases (5 of 35, 2 with low risk and 3 with high risk viruses) and 2.9% of the controls (1 of 35 with low risk virus) had papilloma viruses. However, there was no significant statistical relationship between the HPV DNA presence and the SCC development in skin.
The direct effect of HPV on skin cancerogenesis remains questionable.