Prevalence of Merkel Cell Polyomavirus in Iranian patients with non-Melanoma skin cancer

Introduction: Skin cancer is the most common type of cancer among Caucasian. Two main forms of non-melanoma skin cancer are basal cell carcinoma (BCC) and squamous cell carcinoma (SCC). The presence of Merkel cell polyomavirus (MCPyV) was reported in Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC), but data from Iranian patients are lacking. Multiple factors contribute to the etiology of the cancer and several research groups were reported the role of large oncogenic tumor (LT) antigen of MCPyV in tumor genesis. So, the aim of this study was the evaluation of the presence and of MCPyV in patients’ non melanoma skin tumors who referred to Razi Hospital in Tehran within 2015-2016. Materials and methods: In this cross-sectional study, Totally 40 samples were collected containing 30 BCC, 10 SCC and the DNA genome was extracted. To find positive samples, quantitative Real-Time PCR was done and the full-length of Large T antigen region was amplified and sequenced directly for detection of probable mutations. Results: Our analysis showed that the MCPyV genome was found in 3 out 30 (10%) of BCC samples. However, our statistics data indicated no correlation between sex (P -Value=0.33), age (P-Value=0.5), or stage of cancer (P-Value=0.25) and the presence of MCPyV genome in our populations of study. Conclusion: As our knowledge this is the first study presenting data on the prevalence of MCPyVin non-melanoma skin cancer from Iranian patients. Although several non-synonymous mutations were present at the C terminus of LT in our cases, no mutations causing stop codons were observed. In spite of the fact that the frame shift mutation at the N-terminus of MCPyV LT Ag region is associated with tumorigenesis of the virus.

کلیدواژه ها:

Merkel cell polyomavirus ، Basal cell carcinoma ، Squamous cell carcinoma ، PCR ، Iran