The effect of HPV DNA and p16 status on the prognosis of patients with hypopharyngeal carcinoma: a meta-analysis

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate whether the presence of human papillomavirus (HPV) DNA and p16 might be associated with better prognosis in patients with hypopharyngeal carcinoma (HPC), especially on overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS). METHOD: PubMed, the Cochrane Library, the Web of Science and EMBASE were searched from inception to April 2021 to search for HPV DNA- and p16-related prognostic articles on HPC. Meta-analysis was performed on the selected articles according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Publication bias was assessed for the included studies with Egger’s test. All studies were analyzed by using Stata 16.0 statistical software. RESULTS: A total of 18 studies were included, including 12 HPV DNA studies and 11 p16 studies. Meta-analysis showed that HPV DNA positivity was a strong prognostic factor for improved OS in patients with HPC, with a pooled hazard ratio (HR) of 0.61 (95% CI, 0.54–0.69), but there was no statistically significant difference in DFS (HR, 0.60; 95% CI, 0.31–1.16). Patients with p16-positive tumors had better OS (HR, 0.66; 95% CI, 0.49–0.89) and DFS (HR, 0.59; 95% CI, 0.44–0.78) than patients with p16-negative tumors. CONCLUSIONS: This study suggests that the presence of HPV DNA leads to better OS in patients with HPC, and the presence of p16 also corresponds to better OS and DFS. Our results provide up-to-date evidence to clinicians and researchers. Larger studies adjusting for prognostic factors are needed in subsequent studies. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12885-022-09769-w.