Wart virus makes for less deadly cancer: study

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A wart virus best known for causing cervical cancer may make for a less-deadly kind of head and neck cancer, researchers reported on Thursday.

People whose head and neck tumors carried the human papillomavirus virus, or HPV, were 59 percent less likely to die than people whose tumors were not caused by the virus, the researchers said.

"A patient who has this actually has a better prognosis than patients with HPV-negative tumors," Dr. Richard Schilsky, president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology and a cancer specialist at the University of Chicago, said in an interview.

He said it may be clear now that there are two kinds of head and neck cancers -- those caused by HPV and those linked to other causes, such as smoking and drinking.

Not only can patients be treated differently, perhaps waiting longer for toxic chemotherapy if they have an HPV-positive tumor, but there may be ways to prevent these tumors, Schilsky said.

Two vaccines -- Cervarix, made by GlaxoSmithKline, and Gardasil, made by Merck & Co Inc -- prevent HPV-16 infection.

"There is every reason to think that vaccination with the HPV vaccine will prevent these," Schilsky said.

Dr. Maura Gillison and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore studied 317 head and neck cancer patients whose tumors could be tested for HPV. The phase III study confirms earlier work Gillison's lab did linking HPV and these tumors.