Papillomaviral infection: risk factors of cervical neoplastic progression

Human papillomavirus (HPV) plays the important role in the etiology of the cervical cancer. Considering that the cancer is very rare consequence of HPV-infection and even the high-grade lesions may spontaneously regress, search for the factors capable of predicting disease progression is of great significance. In the present review results of researches into risk factors of developing cervical cancer are summarized. Some virus-associated factors, such as infection with oncogenic types and variants of human papillomavirus, viral load, integration of viral DNA into cell genome, as well as host factors - polymorphism of p53 gene encoding a key apoptotic protein, loss of heterozygosity, tumor suppressor genes hypermethylation - are analyzed in terms of their prognostic value.