Copresence of High-Risk Human Papillomaviruses and Epstein-Barr Virus in Colorectal Cancer: A Tissue Microarray and Molecular Study from Lebanon

Abstract

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third most common cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. Human papillomaviruses (HPVs) and Epstein–Barr virus (EBV) have been reported to be present in different types of human cancers including CRC where they can play a key role in the onset and/or progression of these cancers. Thus, we herein explored the prevalence of high-risk HPVs and EBV in a cohort of 94 CRC tissue samples and 13 colorectal normal tissues from the Lebanese population using polymerase chain reaction, immunohistochemistry, and tissue microarray methodologies. We found that high-risk HPVs are present in 64%, while EBV is present in 29% of our CRC samples. Additionally, our data showed that high-risk HPV types (16, 18, 35, 58, 51, 45, 52, 31 and 33) are the most frequent in CRC in the Lebanese cohort, respectively. Our data point out that HPVs and EBV are co-present in 28% of the samples. Thus, this study clearly suggests that high-risk HPVs and EBV are present/co-present in CRCs where they could play an important role in colorectal carcinogenesis. Nevertheless, further investigations in a larger cohort are needed to elucidate the possible cooperation between these oncoviruses in the development of CRC.