Background: An increasing incidence of oral cancer in women and younger adults with no habit of using tobacco has been noticed in recent years, with human papilloma virus (HPV) infection considered to be the major causative factor especially about tongue. Though role of HPV in oropharyngeal carcinoma is well established, studies in tongue cancers had yielded conflicting results. Materials and Methods: We carried out histopathological evaluation of HPV induced epithelial changes (koilocytes, karyorrhectic cells, and apoptotic bodies) followed by assessment of the presence of HPV deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) in paraffinized tissue sections using multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) in 40 cases of squamous cell carcinoma of lateral border of tongue belonging to both habit and non-habit group. Results: A significant difference in the mean value of apoptotic bodies ( P < 0.05) was noticed between the habit and the non-habit groups. But the difference in the mean value of koilocytes, and karyorrhectic cells noticed between the groups was not significant. The presence of HPV DNA was detected only in 1 out of the 40 (2.5%) tongue squamous cell carcinoma cases subjected for the PCR study. Conclusion: Though a subset of HPV induced oral squamous cell carcinoma seems to exist, HPV does not seem to be the prime etiological agent in oral tongue cancers in the absence of associated risk factors.
Thampy et al. (Thu,) studied this question.