Cervical Cancer

Cervical cancer ranks fourth among all types of cancers in women and accounts for close to 0.6 million new cases worldwide every year. Due to improvements in screening techniques, the mortality rate associated with cervical cancer has fallen by around 50% worldwide. While cervical cancer is the leading cause of death among women in Africa, India and China attribute close to one-third of the total cases reported globally. Epidemiological studies suggest that the human papillomavirus (HPV) is the primary cause of cervical cancer. HPV is also responsible for anal, penile, vaginal, head, and neck cancers. HPV infection is very common that the risk of infection for women in the age of 15–80 years is 50–80%. Most of the HPV infections is cleared by the body inherently. In 10–20% of women, the virus persists and progresses into cervical intraepithelial neoplasm lesions by infecting the basal layer of keratinocytes. The infection metastasizes into an invasive cancer of the cervix upon expression of viral proteins E6, E7, which deregulate cell differentiation and proliferation. The HPV is the primary causative agent for cervical cancer and thus understanding the molecular biology and pathogenesis mechanism of the virus is discussed in this chapter.