No prognostic effect of HPV on the outcome of primary radiotherapy in advanced non-oropharyngeal cancers

Patients with oropharyngeal cancer who are positive for the human papilloma virus (HPV-positive) have a good prognosis, but until now the effect of HPV status on the prognosis of tumours located elsewhere in the head and neck area was unknown. Danish researchers have now shown that HPV status appears to have no prognostic effect on the outcome of primary radiotherapy in head and neck cancer outside the oropharynx. It was a topic of the award lecture, based on analysis of 1606 patients, and presented by Dr Pernille Lassen from the Aarhus University Hospital, Aarhus, Denmark at the ESTRO 33 Congress in Vienna, Austria (4-8 April 2014). Read more here.