Cervical cancer, HPV and personalized medicine

Cervical cancer is an important cause of early loss of life as it affects relatively young women. Iran has a population of 30.13 million women ages 15 years and older who are at risk of developing cervical cancer. It’s with an age-standardized incidence rate of 2.2 per 100,000 women per year. Current estimates indicate that every year 947 women are diagnosed with cervical cancer and 370 die from the disease. Human papilloma virus (HPV) infection is very common worldwide and its prevalence was 76% in cervical cancer patients. Recent evidence also suggests that a primary high risk HPV screening test could provide better protection against cancer risk than cytology. It has been found that genes encoded by oncogenic HPV synthesize proteins which can interact with host epigenetic machinery leading to its deregulation. Also numerous studies have shown the positive association between methylation of the L1 region and CIN2+ stage. Methylation of human genes also increase with length of HPV persistence, and elevated methylation may be detected up to 7 years before discovery of a cancer.Therefore measuring DNA methylation at specific CpG sites in HPV or human genes has shown promise for the accurate detection of CIN2+ and prevention of cervical cancer and its treatment. So genetic differences in HPV positive and negative tumors (cervical, head and neck cancers) can be used to personalized cancer treatment.

Keywords:

Personalized medicine , cervical cancer , HPV , DNA methylation