Just some clarity around Paul�s post taken directly from the abstract of the study itself which was presented at ASCO 2013 a couple of weeks ago. ASCO is the main American Oncology meeting.
For those who also like the data, the link to the original work is below.
http://meetinglibrary.asco.org/content/111185-132Summary of the figures
The study looked at 149 patients with oropharyngeal cancer and 81 partners.
Of the patients, 65% returned positive results ANY
HPV and 52% for
HPV 16 (which is the one we are most interested in) at diagnosis. Of the 81 spouses, 7.3% had ANY
HPV and 2 with
HPV 16 (approx 2.5% by my calculation but not included in the abstract).
The abstract results tell us that one year later, 103 patients and 46 partners were followed up. Of the 52 patients with
HPV 16 diagnosed at begining of therapy, 4 still had evidence of persisting infection. That�s less than 4% for the total group and 7.7% of those who had
HPV 16 in the first place.
Of the 46 partners who were followed up, 2 (both female) had previously returned positive results for
HPV 16 and appeared to have cleared the infection.
There was also an update on the same study presented during one of the lectures and the figures were updated to 166 patients and 94 partners with follow up of 115 patients and 51 partners 12 months later. The outcomes remain more or less the same.
