Background: Cervical cancer is the third commonest type of cancer among women in Malaysia. Our aim was to determine the distribution of human papilloma virus (HPV) genotypes in cervical cancer in our multi-ethnic population.
Materials and methods: This was a multicentre study with a total of 280 cases of cervical cancer from 4 referral centres in Malaysia, studied using real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) detection of 12 high risk-HPV genotypes.
Results: Overall HPV was detected in 92.5% of cases, in 95.9% of squamous cell carcinomas and 84.3%of adenocarcinomas. The five most prevalent high-risk HPV genotypes were HPV 16 (68.2%), 18 (40%), 58 (10.7%), 33 (10.4%) and 52 (10.4%). Multiple HPV infections were more prevalent (55.7%) than single HPV infections (36.8%). The percentage of HPV positive cases in Chinese, Malays and Indians were 95.5%, 91.9% and 80.0%, respectively. HPV 16 and 18 genotypes were the commonest in all ethnic groups. We found that the percentage of HPV 16 infection was significantly higher in Chinese (75.9%) compared to Malays (63.7%) and Indians (52.0%) (p<0.05), while HPV 18 was significantly higher in Malays (52.6%) compared to Chinese (25.0%) and Indians (28%) (p<0.05). Meanwhile, HPV 33 (17.9%) and 52 (15.2%) were also more commonly detected in the Chinese (p<0.05).
Conclusions: This study showed that the distribution of HPV genotype in Malaysia is similar to other Asian countries. Importantly, we found that different ethnic groups in Malaysia have different HPV genotype infection rates, which is a point to consider during the implementation of HPV vaccination.