Expression of p16 in cervical cancer in Urghur women and its correlation with HPV16/18 infection

Objective: To study the p16 protein expression in cervical cancer in Urghur women and its correlation with HPV16/18 infection. Methods: The expression of P16 protein in normal and cervical cancer tissues was evaluated with S-P immunohistochemistry, whereas the infection of HPV was confirmed by PCR using specific primer sets for HPV16 or HPV18, respectively. Results: There were no significant differences in the expression of p16 in either normal cervical tissues or cervical cancers between Urghur and Han nationalities (P>0.05). There were significant differences in the expression of p16 proteins in cervical cancers (97.50%) compared to the expression of those in normal cervical tissues (2.94%) both in Urghur and Han nationalities (P<0.05). The infection rate of HPV16 in the cervical cancer tissues from Urghur women was higher than that in Han women (54.54% in Urghur women and 22.22% in Han women, P<0.05). But the infection rate of HPV18 did not differ significantly in the cervical cancer tissues (P>0.05). Furthermore, there was a positive correlation between the expression of p16 and infection of HPV16 (r = 0.603, P<0.05). Conclusion: This study suggests that the detection of both p16 expression and HPV16 infection will improve the diagnosis rate of cervical cancer.