Evaluation of the genetic variability of human papillomavirus type 52

Human papillomavirus (HPV) type 52 is one of the high-risk HPV types. Its variants can be classified as of Asian and European lineages, while little data of HPV 52 variants are available from China. In this study, the complete E6 and L1 genes were amplified and sequenced in 79 samples from eastern Guangdong, China. In total, 21 variants were identified, 18 of which could be divided into Asian lineage and the other three were phylogenetically related to European lineage. No significant difference was found between the pathogenicity of these two lineage variants. Two HPV-52 lineages variants could be classified by high resolution melting (HRM) analysis. Thus, we believe that the application of HRM analysis would be useful for facilitating pathogenic comparisons between different HPV variants. In addition, we found that 6 females were infected with two types of HPV-52 variants. To our knowledge, this is the first time that this rare phenomenon is reported worldwide.