Dot blot hybridization in detection of human papillomavirus (HPV) infections in the oral cavity of women with genital HPV infections.

The presence of human papillomavirus (HPV) types 2, 6, 7, 11, 13 and 16 DNA in cytologic scrapings of oral mucosa was studied in 309 women with genital HPV infections. The objective was to test the usefulness of oral mucosal scrapings (3 sequential swabs) in HPV DNA detection by dot blot hybridization. Based on hybridization with the 32P-labelled Alu-repeat probe, most samples contained more than 10(5) cells, which is an adequate number of cells for dot blot hybridization. Hybridization with 32P-labelled HPV DNA probes showed that 3.8% of the 309 women had an oral HPV infection. Of these, only 2 had clinical lesions indicative of HPV. All other oral HPV positive subjects had clinically healthy mucosa. HPV 6 was the most common (3.1%) type, followed by HPV 11 and 16 (1.1%). In 3 cases the genital mucosa harboured the same HPV type as found in the oral cavity. The results indicate that oral mucosal scraping results in adequate number of cells for dot blot hybridization with HPV DNA. Although the method is likely to result in an underestimation of latent and subclinical HPV infections, it is useful for studying the clinical HPV infections as well as other viral infections known to be present in exfoliated cells.