The prevalence of human herpesvirus 8 in normal, premalignant, and malignant cervical samples of Iranian women

BACKGROUND: Regard to this fact that the main transmission route of HPV and HHV-8 is via sexual activity, it is reasonable to speculate that coinfection of HPV and HHV-8 may have been played an important role in the development of cervical cancer. The aim of this study was to estimate the prevalence of HHV-8 and the frequency of HPV and HHV-8 coinfection in cervical samples of patients with cervical cancer and healthy individuals. METHODS: In total, 364 samples from 61 patients with cervical cancer, 124 women with premalignant lesions, and 179 healthy individuals were investigated by nested-PCR. RESULTS: The frequency of HHV-8 was found to be 22.9%, 17.7%, and 14.5% in cervical cancer, premalignant lesions, and normal specimens, respectively (P = 0.308). The overall prevalence of coinfection between HHV-8 and HPV was shown to be 16.2%. The HPV prevalence was higher in HHV-8 positive samples than HHV-8 negative specimens in all three studied groups and this difference was reached a statistically significant level (P = 0.002). However, no significant differences were found between HHV-8 positivity and HPV genotypes (P = 0.08). CONCLUSIONS: Our results showed the higher rate of HHV-8 genome detection in cervical cancer group than control group. However, future studies with larger sample sizes and evaluation of expression of HHV-8 proteins are warranted.