Detection of HPV DNA in Lymph Nodes From Cervical Cancer Patients

Early detection of preinvasive stages of neoplasmatic disease results in less severe treatment procedures and good survival rate. Unfortunately, in Poland most cases of cervical cancer are diagnosed in advanced, invasive stages. Therefore most patients undergo radical histerectomy (Piver III). It is well documented that the most important prognostic factor is the occurrence of metastases in pelvic lymph nodes. However, it has been also shown that unexpected recurrences occurred in a few cases with histologically negative lymph nodes and short follow-up. Human Papillomavirus (HPV) is responsible for development of preneoplastic lesions and epithelial cancer of the cervix. The existence of HPV infection in cervical cancer tissue is estimated at 90-99% (according to Eurogin-Committee 2000). Our findings show lower coexistence between cervical cancer and HPV status in northern region of Poland (up to 70%). The aim of our study was to estimate the prevalence of HPV DNA in lymph nodes and neoplasmatic lesions obtained from cervical cancer patients on laparotomy. The material comprised 79 cervical lesions and 365 lymph nodes of iliac, obturatory and inguinal lymph nodes. We analysed the significance of HPV DNA presence in lymph nodes and clinical staging, histological cancer type, histologically confirmed metastasis, invasion into vagina and corpus of the uterus. HPV DNA positive lesions of cervical cancer occurred in 60 cases. The presence of HPV DNA in the external iliac and obturatory lymph nodes occurred in 51.7% (31 cases). The prevalence of HPV DNA in lesions according to clinical stage has been found as follows: 25.0% (1 of 4 patients) in stage IA, 51.9% (14 of 27 patients) in stage IB, 61.9% (13 of 21 patients) in stage IIA and 37.5% (3 of 8 patients) in stage IIB. The HPV DNA presence was related strongly to corpus invasion (p