Louisville Researchers Confirm Link between HPV & Head & Neck Cancers

I was at a social gathering this weekend when some semi-recent transplants to Louisville offhandedly said something like "if you're going to sever your hand off Louisville is the place to be because they've got hand transplant experience here and they'll probably be able to reattach it and maintain hand functionality." Well, ok, that's a very odd thing to say but I'm always up for bragging on Louisville so sure, thanks for pointing out how cool and cutting edge the medical and bioresearch communities in Louisville are. Now let me do a little more bragging and point out a new, and I think, very exciting development from the Louisville medical research community.

An announcement this morning says that researchers have confirmed a connection between HPV and head and neck cancers. That potentially means that the virus for HPV (you know you've seen commercials for it with all the pre-teen girls talking about being "one less.") cold be used to prevent these types of cancers. Yes, yes it's all potential and pretty theoretical at this point but man that's cool.

Researchers at the University of Louisville's James Graham Brown Cancer Center have confirmed a link between the Human papillomavirus and head and neck cancer.

Their findings could have implications for the prevention and treatment of such cancers.

Under the leadership of UofL resident doctor Payal Desai, the team analyzed tissue samples from former patients with head and neck cancer. They found that 29 percent of the samples were positive for HPV and that a majority were the HPV 16 strain of the virus.

These findings indicate that current vaccines, which protect against the HPV 16 virus, could prevent a large number of head and neck cancer cases.

Those are some pretty kick ass findings UofL James Graham Brown Cancer Center researchers. Well done.