Skin Cancer Following Solid Organ Transplantation and Transcribed HPV Infection
Posted: Thursday, September 23, 2021
According to findings presented in the International Journal of Cancer, actively transcribed human papillomavirus (HPV) infections seem to occur in a small number of skin cancers following solid organ transplantation. This suggests that the increase in non-melanoma skin cancers in patients after receiving solid organ transplants is likely not connected to HPV infections, concluded Joakim Dillner, MD, PhD, of the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, and colleagues.
“Although our data imply that HPVs are not the cause of the huge increase in skin cancer seen after transplantation, the proposed ‘hit and run’ mechanism cannot be ruled out, as alternative oncogenic mechanisms are possible,” the authors noted.
The authors first identified all skin cancers diagnosed after solid organ transplantation in Sweden from 1964 to 2011. Then, from those 7,614 cases, they selected diagnostic specimens from 345 patients with non-melanoma skin cancer and performed whole-genome transcriptome analysis.
The authors found that although there was an abundance of “high-quality” paired reads per sample, just 15 non-melanoma skin cancer specimens had HPV transcription. Three samples had a transcription of oncogenic anogenital HPV (HPV16 and 56), and six tumors had a transcription of HPVs from the beta-2 species (three HPV38s, two with HPV23, and one with HPV107). In addition, there was one observation each of transcription of HPV3, 26, 57, 147, 158, and 168, as well as two cases of nonestablished HPV types belonging to the gamma genus.
Disclosure: The authors reported no conflicts of interest.
