HPV ‘likely cause’ of some cases of prostate cancer

Some cases of prostate cancer are “highly likely” to be caused by human papillomavirus (HPV) and universal vaccination should be considered, experts have said.

Researchers writing in the journal Infectious Agents and Cancer suggested there is a strong link between the virus and the deadly cancer, which kills around 12,000 men in the UK each year.

HPV is a common infection which is spread through close skin-toskin contact, usually during sex, including oral sex.

Around eight in 10 people will be infected with HPV at some point in their lives and there are hundreds of different types of HPV. Thirteen HPV types are known to cause cancer, including cervical cancer, penile cancer and some types of mouth and throat cancer.

An HPV jab is currently on offer to all children aged 11 to 13 through the schools vaccination programme.

For the new research, professors James Lawson and Wendy Glenn, from New South Wales University in Australia, reviewed 26 existing studies on HPV and their links to prostate cancer.

HPV types 16 and 18, which cause most cases of cervical cancer, have been found in normal, benign and malignant prostate tissue.

In several of the studies, high-risk HPV DNA was found at a significantly higher prevalence in prostate cancers compared to normal and benign prostate tissue, they said.

And recent studies found that 231 of 1,071 prostate cancers (21.6%) were HPV positive, compared to 74 out of 1,103 benign prostate control samples.

Prof Glenn said: “Across several studies, conducted in a wide range of countries and using different methods to identify HPVS, we found reasonably consistent evidence that high-risk HPVS are significantly more prevalent in prostate cancers than in normal prostate tissues and benign prostate tissues.

“Previous studies have also shown that high-risk HPVS were present in benign prostate tissues that up to 10 years later developed HPV positive prostate cancer of the same HPV type.”

More than 48,000 men each year in the UK are diagnosed with prostate cancer.