Low frequency of human papillomavirus DNA in breast cancer by Research Paper

Low frequency of human papillomavirus DNA in breast cancer by Mendizabal-Ruiz et al 2009 - Research Paper Example All the samples were taken from patients who have no prior history of breast cancers. This means those who had a family history of breast cancer were intentionally excluded from the group sampling in order to isolate the probable cause of the breast cancer to the presence of the HPV only. Out of the 107 samples taken from the pathology department, 67 of them are diagnosed to have breast cancer present while the remaining 40 samples were non-malignant. The purported rationale for this study was to investigate the possible connection that HPV has to certain types of breast cancers, since HPV is already well known to be a causative agent of most cervical uterine cancers. Since some breast cancers were found to have the HPV variants present in some of these cases, it was worth investigating if there is more to presence of the HPV's DNA in these breast cancer cases to link the two together. The HPV has several variants and types 16, 18 and 33 are quite common among certain populations. Th e authors of this study used the polymerase chain reaction method to try to detect the DNA of these HPVs. The aims of their study were to detect a presence of this DNA in breast cancer tissue samples and establish a possible role or link of this virus in the genesis of breast cancer.