Human papillomavirus detection in oral potentially malignant disorders and oral squamous cell carcinoma

Human papillomavirus is associated with a subset of head and neck cancer (hncc) which 90 % of it is oral squamous cell carcinoma (oscc). the purpose of the research is to detect human papillomavirus (hpv) in opmds and oscc using immunohistochemistry (ihc). a total of 118 formalin-fixed paraffin embedded tissues were selected comprising of normal oral mucosa (nom) (n=9),oral epithelial hyperplastic tissue (oeh) (n=31),oral potentially malignant disorders (opmds) cases (n=32) and oscc cases (n=46). the cases were retrieved from 3 different places which are oral pathology laboratory,faculty of dentistry,national university of malaysia; institute of medical research,kuala lumpur and tuanku mizan hospital,kuala lumpur. the ihc staining was manually performed using hpv antibody (clone k1h8,dako) following manufacturer's instruction and assessed semi-quantitatively (positivity and staining intensity) between all groups. positive and negative controls were used to validate the ihc run. all data were then analysed using spss version 23.0 and p values < 0.05 were considered significant. hpv positive was found higher in oscc (34.78%) compared with oeh (3.22%) and opmds (3.12%). in this present study,hpv were increased following degree of malignancy. the finding suggests that hpv plays important role in oscc.