HPV Prevalence in Esophageal Cancer Meta-Analysis

A systematic review and meta-analysis of 151 studies published between 2000 and 2025, covering 18,913 esophageal cancer cases. The study, authored by Yi Nan and published in 2026, quantifies HPV prevalence by region, cancer subtype, and detection method.

Use Cases

• Analyze regional variation in HPV prevalence using the geographic region data from the meta-regression.
• Compare HPV prevalence between esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) and adenocarcinoma (EAC) using the reported subtype-specific rates (29% vs 16%).
• Assess the association strength between HPV infection and cancer risk using the pooled odds ratio of 2.92.
• Investigate the impact of detection method on reported prevalence, such as PCR-based methods showing 31% overall prevalence.
• Identify the most common HPV genotype in EC cases, with specific focus on HPV-16 prevalence.

Strengths

• Analysis is based on 151 studies encompassing 18,913 individual esophageal cancer cases.
• Provides specific prevalence estimates with 95% confidence intervals for different cancer subtypes and geographic regions.
• Includes a temporal coverage of studies published from January 2000 to November 2025.

Limitations

• The dataset is a 3.4 MB PDF document; the underlying tabular meta-analysis data is not provided in a machine-readable format.
• Findings are based on aggregated study-level data, not individual patient records, limiting granular analysis.
• The evidence is observational, as noted by the authors, which limits causal inference.

Provenance

Source

figshare, authored by Yi Nan.

Collection Method

Systematic literature review of PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science, with data extraction and random-effects meta-analysis.

Time Range

Studies published between January 1, 2000 and November 28, 2025.

Freshness

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Geography

Global, with regional breakdowns including East Asia which showed the highest prevalence.