Lack of Association between Herpes Simplex Virus Type 2 Infection and Cervical Cancer - Taq Man Realtime PCR Assay Findings

Background: About one third of the human population suffer cancer during their lifetime and morethan 20% of total morbidity is related to neoplasia. Cervical cancer is generally the most common cancerin developing countries and the second most common in women globally. The role of human papillomaviruses viruses in its induction is clear. However, the involvement of hepres simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) iscontroversial. Therefore a survey was conducted of the prevalence of HSV-2 in patients with cervical cancerand also healthy people with sensitive and quantitative Taq Man real-time PCR assay. Materials and methods:Seventy six formaldehyde fixed paraffin embedded tissue specimens from patients with histologicallyproven history of cervical cancer as well as 150 control blocks were sectioned for deparaffinization andDNA extraction.
Results: There was no HSV-2 DNA in our patient specimens but four control samples werepositive, all with a history of hysterectomy.
Conclusion: Considering the absence of any positive viral HSV-2DNA in our patients and also the presence of four positive specimens among our controls, we did not findany relationship between the presence of HSV-2 DNA and cervical cancer.