HUMAN PAPILLOMAVIRUS IN NON-GENITAL BOWENS-DISEASE AND BOWENOID CARCINOMA

Recently the presence of HPV in non-genital Bowen's disease has been f ound in few cases. We analysed 13 cases of bowenoid carcinoma by the f ollowing technical approachs: I -Southern - blot to define the physica l state of viral sequences in the cells; II - in situ hybridization to identify the single cell infected by specific HPVs; III - PCR to dete ct even a very low level of virus sequences. By these methods we have found HPV 16 DNA sequences in 4 of 13 patients with different topograp hic presentations of Bowen's disease or bowenoid carcinoma. The sequen ces of HPV 16 DNA in all cases were in an unintegrated form but in a p atient presenting two lesions located in the hand, finger and foot int erdigital space, the latter one revealed the integration of viral sequ ences into the host genome. The coincidence of having found all our ca ses positive to HPV 16 located on the fingers and in association with the invasive form of carcinoma demonstrate the peculiarity of these le sions and the importance in screening Bowen's disease for the presence of HPV DNA.