[Tumor viruses in urology with special respect to human papillomavirus and human polyomavirus]

The advent of molecular biology has made a great progress for HPV research. It is now considered that more than 90% of cervical carcinomas are caused by HPV infection. However, it is the problem that penile lesions associated with cancer-related HPV types are subclinical, resulting in acceleration of HPV transmission by male reservoir. We urologists should make an effort to treat HPV infection and to prevent HPV prevalence. On the other hand, any pathological role of JCV has not been revealed in humans except for PML. Nowadays, it is considered unlikely that there is a pathogenetic relationship between JCV and human tumors. However, since archetypal JCV has been discovered, it has been thought that archetypal JCV receives DNA rearrangements during latency in the kidney by some immunological derangements of the host and is subsequently altered to PML-type JCV. Additionally, there is a possibility that archetypal JCV causes asymptomatic hematuria. More investigation will be necessary for elucidating pathological role of archetypal JCV in the field of urology.