Influence of HPV infection in esophageal cancer: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Literature has reported that there is ~22 % prevalence of high risk (HR)-human papillomavirus (HPV) subtypes in esophageal cancer (EC), the sixth most common cause of cancer related deaths in both genders worldwide. But, the association of HPV in the development of EC is still not clear. A systematic search on studies with HPV infection and EC was performed using Pub-Med and Science Direct database. A total of 1756 research articles were screened. A random-effect model was used to estimate the overall ODDs Ratio (ORs) and 95 % Confidence Interval (CI) through RevMan 5.3 software. After stringent screening, 33 research articles were selected for meta-analysis following the PRISMA guidelines. Out of these 33 studies, 19 are case-control, 11 are cohort/ observational studies and 3 are cross-sectional studies which were analyzed for HPV infection and EC risk. In case-control studies, a significant association of HR–HPV 16 [3.59 (95 % CI: 2.60–4.96); p-value