I don't hear much talk of HPV on this site. There seems to be more and more evidence that this causes cancer. My husband was never a smoker or drinker, only socially. We believe that he may have contracted HPV. We don't have the results of his specimen taken in the biopsy or even if the physicians check for this, although they have been made aware of the concern.

HPV is a virus and will never go away. I wonder how this will play a role in his long-term fight of SCC? Any thoughts?

There is actually a great deal of talk about HPV on this site (both on the forum itself and in the various resources you can find from the main home page). If you use the search function from the OCF home page, you should find plenty of articles and other recent info about the connections between HPV and oral cancer.

Cathy

Adding to Cathy's post click on "search" at the top of the page, type in "HPV" and 95 posts will come up and that's only what's in the forum. You may wish to go to the main page and also check the recent news section.

Besides the almost 100 finds on the discussion forum there are more than 151 finds on the main body of the web site. As someone who came to his disease via this virus, I have an active interest in it, and have not left it out of the material that we have put up .

1. HPV_Fact_Sheet.pdf

The OCF web site is to my mind the best source of information on the relationship of HPV to (some) HNC.

My husband Barry is entering Dr. Gillison's (one of major reserachers on HPV+HNC) vaccine trial in July and we will keep folks posted on what this entails and what happens during the trial. This is only the Phase-1 trial of a possible therapeutic HPV-16 vaccine and is thus *many* years from any clinical application (if ever), but it an example of the new approaches being explored through application of biotechnology.

Gail

You can ask your oncologist to send pathology to Johns Hopkins for testing. My huband also had tonsil cancer and we had pathology sent. We received what I view as good news this week and his was HPV 16 positive . We are also attemping to get in the Johns Hopkins study, and while they do not require the test to be done, we had it done because we live so far away. Since we know it is HPV possitive we do not mind the expense for fly to Baltimore. I googled HPV testing Johns Hopkins and printed the detailed information on sending the tissue, I gave it to the oncologist and they sent it for testing. I was so happy when I we got the results,because the studies show a better prognosis for HPV 16 + head and neck cancer.