Distribution of 37 human papillomavirus types in parotid gland tumor tissues

Human papillomavirus (HPV) infection has been shown to be associated with human tumorigenesis. The aim of the present study was to demonstrate the association between HPV infection and parotid gland tumors. Paraffin-embedded tissue sections from 59 cases of parotid gland tumors and 20 normal oral mucosa were subjected to DNA extraction and flow-through hybridization and gene chip technology to detect infection of 37 HPV types. The HPV-positive rate was 57.6% in parotid gland tumor paraffin-embedded tissue specimens, whereas, the normal control group was negative for HPV. The HPV-positive rate was 59.6% in parotid gland benign tumor tissues and 42.9% in parotid malignant tissues. HPV infection in parotid gland tumors was dominated by the high-risk subtypes (80.7%), which mainly consisted of HPV 16, 18 and 52 (61.4%). In addition, parotid gland tumor tissues were found to be infected by multiple or single types of HPV, but were predominantly infected by mixed HPV types. In this study, we found that the occurrence of parotid gland tumor is correlated with HPV infection.