Literature Review: A Roundup of Important Recent Studies

Synopsis: Patient-matched tumor, normal and metastatic tissue was gathered from 42 OPSCC patients, evaluated and tested with various methodologies. When comparing the presence of HPV16 DNA in tumor, metastatic and normal tissue by in situ hybridization (ISH), perfect correlation was found at all subsites. However, active infections determined by HPV16 E6 and E7 expression, using quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) or p16 detection by immunohistochemistry (IHC), were present only in primary and metastatic tissue. No such correlation was found in normal tissue when compared to primary or metastatic tissue. The authors noted that their findings support the idea of latent virus in adjacent normal tissue, as manifested by HPV ISH positivity, without E6, E7 or p16 activity by qPCR.

Bottom line: There is a clear pattern of active HPV expression that correlates to the course of OPSCC.

Reference: Laborde RR, Janus JR, Olsen SM, et al. Human papillomavirus in oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma: assessing virus presence in normal tissue and activity in cervical metastasis. Laryngoscope. 2012;122(12):2707-2711.

—Reviewed by Sue Pondrom

Safety of Antimicrobial Photodynamic Therapy for CRS Studied

Is antimicrobial photodynamic therapy (aPDT) a safe treatment for chronic recurrent sinusitis (CRS)?

Background: CRS is one of the most common chronic conditions in the U.S., affecting an estimated 37 million people. CRS is also considered a significant factor in exacerbating asthma, chronic lung diseases, eczema, otitis media and chronic fatigue. However, there is no standard therapy to control and cure CRS. Treatment with aPDT, a noninvasive, nonantibiotic broad-spectrum antimicrobial treatment, must be evaluated to be sure that it will not result in histologic damage to the sinus ciliated respiratory epithelium.

Study design: Experimental study with EpiAirway.

Setting: Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis; PhotoBiologix, Inc., Minneapolis; Abbott Northwestern Hospital, Department of Pathology, Minneapolis; Sinuware, Inc., Bothell, Washington.

Synopsis: EpiAirway AFT-100-AFB (MatTek Corp., Ashland, Mass.), a full thickness, human, ciliated mucus-forming, respiratory mucosa culture with 21 days growth without antibacterials or antifungals was used as an in vitro airway tissue model that originates from normal, human-derived, tracheal/bronchial epithelial cells cultured to form a three-dimensional, pseudostratified, ciliated, highly differentiated model closely resembling the epithelial tissue of the respiratory tract. The study was designed to mimic an aPDT human sinus treatment with topical application. Samples from seven study groups were evaluated by a board-certified human pathologist. Persistence of ciliated respiratory epithelium was seen in all specimens. There were no specific histomorphological findings.