Cervical cancer second leading cause of deaths among women in India
   Date :19-Feb-2020

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By Shivanjali Verma :
 
Cervical cancer is second leading cause of deaths due to cancer among Indian women. Persistent infection of high-risk genotypes of human papillomavirus (HPV) is the main cause of cervical cancer. Now, according to new findings, HPV 16 and HPV 18 are major causes of cervical carcinoma in Central India. HPV 16 was more prominent infection than HPV 18. Oncologists from Cancer Hospital, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Medical College and ICMR Jabalpur recently conducted a study to estimate incidence of HPV 16 and 18 infections in cervical cancer patients from Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh.
 
The study was conducted by Dr Shyamji Rawat from Cancer Hospital and Dr Sulekha Yadav and Senior Scientist, Dr P V Barde from ICMR on high incidence of Human Papillomavirus Types 16 and 18 in Cervical Carcinoma Patients in a Tertiary Care Unit, Jabalpur, MP, India. Talking about their works, Oncologist Dr Shyamji Rawat told this newspaper that, “In this hospital-based study, cervical biopsy samples, received from tertiary healthcare hospital, were subjected to molecular tests for HPV 16 and HPV 18. The p53 polymorphism at the 72 positions was studied by Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR).
 
The clinical and socio-demographic information of the patients was analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) 20.” “A total of 87 cervical carcinoma tissues were analysed by type-specific PCR for its presence. Forty-five (51.7%) were infected with HPV 16 while 27 (31%) had HPV 18. Similarly, the combined infection of HPV 16 and HPV 18 was detected among 15 (17.2%) patients. Overall HPV incidence was 65.5%. Arginine (Arg) homozygosity dominance was not significant among cervical carcinoma patients”, he added.
 
Dr Rawat referred illiteracy and unawareness as major causes associated with HPV incidence. According to him, cancer among women follows a pattern like in urban areas women are more affected with breast cancer while in rural areas cervical cancer dominates. Women in rural areas are at high risk of cervical cancer due to HPV transmission, which is commonly, occurs following poor menstrual hygiene and sexual intercourse. Despite having proper vaccine against HPV virus to avoid cervical cancer, a major chunk of parents normally avoid to administer the same to their girl children. in fact, if the vaccination is administered among the girls before their first intercourse, it would definitely reduce the graph of cervical cancer to a large extent.