Protective association between human papilloma virus and handgrip strength in women, a cross-sectional study

Background: To understand the relationship between human papilloma virus (HPV) and handgrip strength (HS) in women. Methods We based our survey on data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2011–2014). Comparable dataset was created by propensity score matching (1: 1). The Welch two-sample t test was used to analyze the association between HPV infection and HS. For further validation, a linear mixed model was performed. Restricted cubic spline curve and Kendall's tau-b test were used to explore the effect of HPV infection type on HS. Results A total of 1118 female eligible subjects were included in the comparable dataset. The mean HS of 559 subjects infected with HPV was 60.83 ± 9.65 (Kg), which was significantly higher than that of uninfected subjects (59.16 ± 10.89) (P = 0.007). Linear mixed model revealed a higher HS (mean increase = 1.094) was found in subjects infected with HPV (P = 0.026), compared to uninfected. And the larger the number of cooccurring HPV types in a woman, the higher the HS was (P for nonlinear < 0.05). In addition, Kendall's tau-b correlation tests showed HPV type 59 was negatively correlated with HS. HPV type 51, 61 and 72 were positively correlated with HS. Conclusions There is a protective association between HPV infection and HS in female subjects by analyzing data from a nationally representative database. The larger the number of cooccurring HPV types, the higher the HS was.