Clinicopathologic correlations between human papillomavirus 16 infection and Beclin 1 expression in human cervical cancer.

Our earlier study showed that the autophagy gene Beclin 1 could affect cell proliferation in a cervical cancer HeLa cell line. In this study, we examined Beclin 1 protein expression in 81 specimens of cervical squamous carcinoma by immunohistochemistry. Meanwhile, we detected E6 and E7 genes of human papillomavirus 16 in these tissues by polymerase chain reaction. Beclin 1 expression significantly decreased in samples of malignant cervical cancer tissues than in those of normal or cervical intraepithelial neoplasia tissues. The expression of Beclin 1 was associated with pelvic lymph node metastasis and histological grade, but did not correlate with International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics stage, age, depth of cervical infiltration, tumor size, and gross type of cervical lesion. The expression of Beclin 1 was not obviously correlated with E6 and E7 genes statistically. Therefore, decreased expression of Beclin 1 may be related to tumorigenesis and the development of cervical cancer, but is not significantly relevant with human papillomavirus 16 infection.