Human papillomavirus infection in the cervix of pregnant females in Hong Kong.

Routine cytological examination and HPV-DNA probing were performed on cervical cells obtained from 215 pregnant Chinese females. The procedure utilized the specific binding of a mixture of complementary [32P]-labelled RNA probes to membrane-bound target HPV DNA types 6, 11, 16, 18, 31, 33 and 35. Positive results for HPV-DNA were obtained in 11/215 (5%) of the cases. The cervical smears were routinely processed and in 3/215 (1.5%) cases a cytological diagnosis of wart virus infection was made. All three were included in the 11 probe-positive cases. Using similar molecular biological techniques, pregnant Western females have an incidence of HPV infection of the cervix which is up to five times that of the present series. This is an unexpected finding in view of the fact that the incidence of cervical cancer is higher in Chinese women than American women.