title: Human papillomavirus frequency in oral and oropharyngeal cancer in Greece.
abstract: The presence of human papillomavirus (HPV) was successfully analyzed by both general and type-specific HPV PCR in 103 samples from 115 patients diagnosed with oral and oropharyngeal cancer in Greece during the years 1986-2007.
  
  
  RESULTS
  In total 13/103 (13%) tumours were HPV-positive and the majority of these were HPV-16-positive. Of the tonsillar cancer samples, 12/28 (43%) were HPV-positive and, notably, 1/6 (17%) collected between 1992-1998 and 11/22 (50%) collected between 2000-2007 were HPV-positive. Of the tongue cancer samples, 1/38 (3%) were HPV-positive, while none of the 41 oral cavity cancer samples was HPV-positive.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Almost half of all the Greek tonsillar cancer patients had HPV in their tumours, with HPV-16 as the dominant type, and a tendency towards an increase in the proportion of HPV tumours was observed when comparing the percentage of HPV-positive tumours collected between 1992-1998 with those collected between 2000-2007.
authors.affiliation: Department of Oncology Pathology, Karolinska Institutet, Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden.
authors.forename: Mircea
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Romanitan
authors.forename: Anders
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Näsman
authors.forename: Torbjörn
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Ramqvist
authors.forename: Hanna
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Dahlstrand
authors.forename: Leonidas
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Polykretis
authors.forename: Prokopis
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Vogiatzis
authors.forename: Periklis
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Vamvakas
authors.forename: Georgios
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Tasopoulos
authors.forename: Christos
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Valavanis
authors.forename: Petroula
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Arapantoni-Dadioti
authors.forename: Konstantinos
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Banis
authors.forename: Tina
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Dalianis