持续性人乳头瘤病毒感染与宫颈癌的研究进展

宫颈癌是一种常见的妇科肿瘤, 严重威胁广大女性的生命和健康.虽然引起宫颈癌的原因很多,但目前认为,人乳头瘤病毒(human papillomavirus,HPV)感染是宫颈癌的根本致病因素.HPV通常在感染后能自行消失,只有持续的高危型人乳头瘤病毒感染才是导致宫颈癌的根本原因.本文就HPV持续性感染与子宫颈癌研究进展进行了概述,并对其研究前景作一展望.

Relationship between persistent HPV infection and cervical carcinoma

Human papillomavirus (HPV) genital infection is a very common sexual transmitted disease. Mostly, the infection is transient and asymptomatic. The induction of effective immune responses usually allows the infection to be spontaneously cured. However, the infection sometimes can be responsible for an intraepithelial lesion, which may progress to be cervical cancer. Cervical cancer is one of the most common neoplastic diseases affecting women. It is clear that carcinogenic HPV infection is the necessary process for the development of cervical cancer. HPV infection is very frequent in young women aged less than 25 years and viral clearance lasts for 8 months in average. This clearance is the consequence of host immunity intervention, which leads to spontaneous regression of infection and the overwhelming majority of low-grade squamous intraepithelial lesions (more than 80% within a period of 2 years). The major factor, which permits the progression to high grade squamous intraepithelial lesions and invasive cervical cancer, is the persistent feature of HPV infection. HPV infection is usually transient, but several factors were identified as host factors (genetic, immunodepression, oral contraception and smoking) and viral factors (genotype, variants, viral load and integration) to increase the persistence. Cervical cancer is clearly the first virus-induced solid tumor discovered in human. Furthermore, it represents a woman death cause that can be avoided.