Detection of human papilomavirus types 16 and 18 in pathologic samples from patients with cervical cancer by PCR and RFLP methods

Infection with human papiloma virus (HPV) is the most frequent sexually transmitted disease worldwide. HPV types 16, 18, 31 and 33 are considered as the most important types in the cervical cancer.This study was undertaken on 64 samples of archival cervical carcinoma pathologic to assess the rate of HPV infection (HPV16,18) in cervical carcinoma among Iranian patients. HPV DNA was detected by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and typing by restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analysis.The total prevalence of HPV in this study (HPV16,18) for all cases was 59.4% (38/64). HPV type 16 was the most common one (22/64, 34%) followed by HPV type 18 (16/64, 25%). On the basis of the rate of HPV (16,18) which were detected in squamous cell carcinoma and adenocarcinoma,only women with HPV18 infection showed a statistically significant risk for development of cervical cancer (P=0.019) while P value for HPV16 was 0.47.