Human papillomavirus, gene mutation and estrogen and progesterone receptors in breast cancer: a cross-sectional study

INTRODUCTION: Recent studies show a good relationship between breast cancer (BC) and human papillomaviruses (HPV), responsible for about 18% of BC cases. This study aimed to assess the relationship between different genotypes of HPV and the expression of P53 and retinoblastoma (RB) genes and estrogen and progesterone receptors in BC among Sudanese women. METHODS: one hundred and fifty tissue blocks were obtained from females diagnosed with BC. Positive samples were used to determine genotypes with an applied biosystem (ABI 3730XL) genetic analyzer for sequencing and immunohistochemistry. RESULTS: 30/150 samples showed HPV DNA. High-risk HPV-16 was detected in 5 cases, high-risk-HPV-58 was found in four cases, and HPV-18 was detected in three cases. Low-risk-HPV-11 was detected in a single invasive lobular carcinoma (ILC) case. P53 and RB gene mutations were detected in 35 and 30 BC cases, respectively. P53 gene mutation was frequently identified in grade (III) BC; RB gene mutation was positive in grade (II). Grade (II) BC had a higher incidence of HPV-16 and 58, HPV-18 in grade (III), and HPV-16 and 18 in grade (I). Estrogen and progesterone receptors were expressed in 94 and 79 HPV cases among the study group, respectively. CONCLUSION: this study elucidates associations between HPV genotypes and BC. A statistically significant association between IDC and ILC and different HPV genotyping is observed, and a significant correlation was found between p53 and RB gene mutation with BC. RB gene mutation was significantly associated with different BC grades. On the other hand, there was a statistically insignificant association between progesterone receptor expression and BC.