Worldwide Prevalence of Human Papillomavirus and Relative Risk of Prostate Cancer: A Meta-analysis

Despite the increasing number of studies conducted recently to evaluate the association between HPV infections and the risk of prostate cancer, the results remain inconclusive. Furthermore, the prevalence and distribution of overall and individual HPV types worldwide in prostate cancer has not been reported until now. Therefore, we estimated the prevalence of HPV in prostate cancer by pooling data of 46 studies with 4919 prostate cancer cases, taking into account the heterogeneity of major related parameters, including study region, specimen type, HPV DNA source, detection method, publication calendar period and Gleason score. Moreover, we tested the association of HPV infections with prostate cancer risks by a meta-analysis of 26 tissue-based case-control studies. We found that the prevalence of HPV infection was 18.93% (95% CI = 17.84-20.05%) in prostate cancer cases, and most of which were high-risk HPV types (17.73%, 95% CI = 16.52-18.99%). The prevalence varied by region, PCR primers used, publication calendar period and Gleason score. Our study also showed a significantly increased risk of prostate cancer with the positivity of overall HPV detected in prostate tissues (OR = 1.79, 95% CI = 1.29-2.49) and revealed the geographic variation of association strength (P < 0.001). In conclusion, HPV infections may contribute to the risk of prostate cancer.