Women with certain gene variations appear to be protected against cervical cancer, according to a study led by scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University and reported in Clinical Cancer Research.
Knowing whether or not women have these genetic variants could help physicians to better tailor treatment strategies.
Virtually all cases of cervical cancer are caused by persistent infections from several of the human papillomaviruses (HPV) — a family of viruses that also cause common skin warts and genital warts. HPV is the most commonly sexually transmitted infection in young adults, yet only a small subset of these infections lead to cervical cancer.
"Some people are better able than others to mount an immune response that suppresses their HPV infection," says Mark H. Einstein, M.D., associate professor of obstetrics & gynecology and women's health at Einstein. "We suspected that this advantage was probably due to variations in genes that play key roles in the body's immune response."
To find out, the researchers recruited 480 women and divided them into two groups: those with high-grade cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN), a premalignant condition caused by HPV that can lead to cervical cancer; and a control group of women who had tested positive for HPV but had not developed high-grade CIN.
The researchers took cells from the women and looked for genetic differences between the two groups. They focused on a gene called TAP, known to be crucial to the immune system's ability to recognize viruses and eliminate them from the body.