Assessment of archived paraffin-embedded cervical condyloma tissues for mycoplasma-conserved DNA using sensitive PCR-ELISA

Clinically, it is important to detect mycoplasmas because these organisms h ave been implicated in gastric and ovarian cancer, pneumonia, postabortal f ever, pelvic inflammatory disease, pyelonephritis, endometritis, urethritis , perinatal mortality, arthritis, spontaneous abortion, infertility and int erference with sperm development and they act as cofactors catalyzing the H IV disease state. Recently, the combined polymerase chain reaction and enzy me-linked immunosorbent assay method targeting the consensus DNA of over 15 species of mycoplasmas was shown to be superior for the detection of mycop lasmas. The objective was to determine if there was an association between mycoplasmas and cervical neoplasia. Cervical tissues, histopathologically c ategorized by cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) grade, flat or exoph ytic, and acanthosis or koilocytotic, were used. The results showed that my coplasmas DNA were present in 21.4% of the condyloma tissues and in 33.3% o f condyloma tissues with GIN. In contrast, mycoplasmas DNA were not detecte d when there were no CIN. The presence or absence of human papillomavirus ( HPV) did not make a difference. Mycoplasmas DNA were present in 40.0 and 12 .5% of the exophytic and flat condylomas, respectively. A higher percentage of cervical tissues graded with slight koilocytosis had (P = 0.05) mycopla smas DNA compared with tissues graded with moderate koilocytosis. The detec tion of mycoplasmas DNA in archived cervical condyloma tissues with CIN cor roborated previous reports of an association between mycoplasmas and GIN. H owever, the association between mycoplasmas and the presence of HPV could n ot be made in this study. (C) 1998 Academic Press.