Detection of Human Papillomavirus in Lesions of Uterine Cervix Immunohistochemistry and in situ Hybridization

ABSTRACT

To evaluate the detection of HPV DNA according to subtype of lesions of uterine cervix and its clinical applicability, in situ hybridization (ISH) and immunohistochemistry for HPV were performed in 189 cases of uterine cervical lesion, including 23 cases of low grade squamous intraepithelial lesion (SIL), 115 cases of high grade SIL and 51 cases of invasive carcinoma. Positive immunostaining, brown precipitate, was mainly noted in the nucleus of koilocytes in the superficial and intermediate layer. Positivity of immunostaining was 21.7% in low grade SIL, 13.0% in high grade SIL and 9.8% in invasive carcinoma. Positive reaction in ISH, red precipitate, was noted in the nucleus of not only koilocytes but also non-koilocytes in the superficial and intermediate layer, and dot precipitate was rarely identified in the nest of squamous cell carcinoma. Based on HPV subtype, 6/11 was 21.7% in low grade SIL, 16/18 was 32.2% and 39.2% in high grade SIL and invasive carcinoma, respectively. With regard to their associated HPV types, low grade SILs were heterogeneous and high grade SILs and invasive carcinomas were related with the high oncogenic risk group only. The correlation of HPV subtypes with panHPV was 91.3% in low grade SIL, 91.3% in high grade SIL and 98.0% in invasive carcinoma. These results suggest that detection of HPV infection by ISH may be a more useful method than immunohistochemistry and application of the HPV subtype probe with the panHPV probe could improve the sensitivity of ISH.