Human papillomavirus

Abstract

In the past year, new data have been published on the molecular biology of human papillomavirus infections and their relationship to cervical neoplasia. As molecular techniques have become more sophisticated and as the molecular knowledge of human papilloma-virus infections has been pursued in greater depth, it is increasingly apparent that this human tumor DNA virus is similar to a number of other oncogenic DNA viruses that have been described and well studied. These viruses appear to act through a common pathway of producing oncogenic proteins that interfere with key signalling elements that normally control the process of cell division. With a better mechanistic knowledge, it should be possible to design new therapeutic approaches to treating human papillomavirus-associated disease that are directed toward specific cellular events such as turning off the production of E6 and E7 proteins or restoring the activity of pRB or p53. Increased attention has also been turned to immunologic aspects of HPV infections, and a number of groups are eagerly pursuing the possibility of using simple office-based procedures to detect specific proteins encoded for by the human papillomavirus open reading frames in an attempt to determine who has been infected, is actively infected, and has proteins being produced that are indicative of neoplasia. From the clinical point of view, the use of outpatient excisional techniques such as the loop electrosurgical excision procedure is rapidly supplanting ablative techniques because of their superior ability to identify early invasive carcinomas and adenocarcinomas in situ that have not been detected by colposcopy.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)