Correlation Between Prognostic Indicators, HPV Status, and Cancer Stem Cell Markers in a Population of Human Tongue Carcinomas.

Human papillomavirus DNA was detected in 2/83 cases (2.4%): one HPV16-positive and one with co-infection (HPV6/18).

CD44 expression was ubiquitously high, with no significant difference between -High and -Positive categories (p > 0.9999), but both were significantly higher than -Low and -Negative scores (p < 0.0001).

ALDH1 exhibited a focal staining pattern.

An inverse correlation was observed between human papillomavirus and clinical staging (Spearman r: -0.2377; p = 0.0305); however, due to the low number of human papillomavirus-positive cases, this finding must be interpreted with caution.