HUMAN PAPILLOMAVIRUS TYPE-11 AND TYPE-16 DETECTED IN NASOPHARYNGEAL CARCINOMAS BY THE POLYMERASE CHAIN-REACTION

Most nasopharyngeal carcinomas (NPCs) are of the nonkeratinizing or un differentiated types, which are consistently associated with Epstein-B arr virus (EBV). The smaller group of highly differentiated, keratiniz ing NPCs seems to be only infrequently associated with EBV. In order t o examine whether these rare tumors were related to another oncogenic virus, the authors used the polymerase chain reaction to examine paraf fin-embedded sections of 15 keratinizing NPCs for human papillomavirus (HPV) types 6, 11, 16, and 18 genomic sequences. HPV DNA was found in 4 tumors (1 HPV-ll-positive, and 3 HPV-16-positive tumors). None of 2 3 undifferentiated or nonkeratinizing NPCs harbored HPV DNA. The putat ively oncogenic HPV type 16 may thus be involved in the carcinogenesis of some EBV-negative keratinizing squamous cell nasopharyngeal carcin omas.