Comparison of
HPV
Antibodies Measured Prior to Diagnosis of Anal, Cervical, Oropharyngeal, Penile and Vaginal Cancers in the
HPV
Cancer Cohort Conso
Justina Ucheojor Onwuka, Marie‐Pierre Nobels, Aimée R. Kreimer, Lea Schroeder, Aida Ferreiro‐Iglesias, Ilir Agalliu, Demetrius Albanes, Qiuyin Cai, Gypsyamber D'Souza, Neal D. Freedman, Graham G. Giles, Allan Hildesheim, Wen‐Yi Huang, Kristian Hveem, Hilde Langseth, Roger L. Milne, Eivind Ness‐Jensen, Nicolas F. Schlecht, Lesley F. Tinker, Giske Ursin, Kala Visvanathan, Sylvia Wassertheil‐Smoller, Stephanie J. Weinstein, Wei Zheng, Mari Nygard, Mattias Johansson, Tim Waterboer, Gary M. Clifford, Hilary A. Robbins ABSTRACT
Antibodies against HPV proteins can provide pre‐diagnostic information about cancer development. We described the prevalence of antibodies to proteins of oncogenic HPV types prior to diagnosis of HPV‐related cancers. We analysed pre‐diagnostic blood from 1700 participants with incident HPV‐related cancers (anal = 387, cervical = 274, oropharyngeal = 788, penile = 168, vaginal = 83) and 6221 controls from nine prospective cohorts in Europe, North America and Australia in the HPV Cancer Cohort Consortium. We measured antibodies against E6, E7 and L1 proteins for 6 HPV types, and additionally against E1, E2, E4, E6, E7 and L1 proteins of HPV16 and 18. We described seroprevalence by lead time from blood draw to cancer diagnosis (range: 0–43 years). We found that among oropharyngeal cancers, seroprevalence increased approaching diagnosis for HPV16 E1, E2, E4, E6, E7, L1 and HPV18 E1, E2, L1 (HPV16‐E6: from 10.4% at > 20 years to 35.8% at 0–5 years, vs. 0.3% in controls). Anal cancer showed similar patterns for HPV16 E1, E2, E4, E6 and L1 and HPV18 E2 (HPV16‐E6: from 3.8% at > 20 years to 29.8% at 0–5 years). No trends were observed for cervical, penile, or vaginal cancers. In a multivariable model fit among cases, HPV16‐E6 seropositivity was higher at shorter lead times and more recent calendar periods, lower among US non‐Hispanic Blacks, and varied by cancer type (highest in oropharyngeal followed by anal, vaginal, penile and cervical) (all p < 0.03). In conclusion, pre‐diagnostic HPV antibody responses vary by cancer type, with seroprevalence of 6–9 HPV proteins increasing approaching diagnosis for oropharyngeal and anal cancers, but not cervical, penile or vaginal cancers.