[The use of PCR technique in the evaluation of the frequency of HPV infection in vulvar and cervical carcinoma].
In this study we estimated the frequency of human papillomavirus (HPV) infection in patients with vulvar and cervical carcinoma by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). We took into consideration the age of patients, the HPV infection status and frequency of HPV types. Vulvar and cervical smears obtained from 88 patients with vulvar and cervical carcinoma, treated in 1997 in II Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Medical University in Gdańsk were investigated for HPV DNA. We used the multiplex polymerase chain reaction (M-PCR) with four primer pairs: two primer pairs located in the E6, E7 open reading frame (ORF) for HPV6, 11, 16, 18, 31, 33, 35, 39, 45, 52b i 58 and primer par located in L1 ORF and type-specific primer for HPV16 (E6 ORF). We used restriction fragments length polimorphism PCR (RFLP-PCR) method for HPV typing. HPV DNA was detected in 3 (19%) of the 18 patients with vulvar carcinoma, of whom 3 (100%) had HPV16. In cervical carcinoma, DNA HPV identified in 50 (71%) of the 70, of whom 43 (86%) had HPV16, 3 had HPV31, 3 HPV33 and one was positive for HPV52-b. We did not find significant differences between the frequency of the HPV infection in different age groups of patients with cervical carcinoma. In vulvar cancer, we found the HPV infections significantly more often in group of patients in the age below 55.