[Correlations between the HPV type, DNA index and evolution of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN)]

Correlation between human papillomavirus infection and DNA ploidy in the prognosis of uterine cervical intraepithelial neoplasia. Due to the increasing frequency of human papillomavirus (HPV) infection of cervical epithelium in patients with cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) of different grades, methods are needed to identify progressive lesions. HPV typing as well as quantitative DNA analysis are possible tools to identify high-risk lesions. The aim of our study was to compare the results of "in situ" hybridization and of DNA content analysis with behavior of CIN I and CIN II lesions in 14 patients with HPV infection. Three of the 4 cases with regression of the cervical lesions were diploid, with HPV 16/18 detected in 2 of the 3. The 5 cases with progression were aneuploid, and 4 of them were HPV positive. In the 3 cases with no changes a near-diploid DNA content was observed. DNA analysis was not available in 2 cases. These preliminary results suggest that progressive CIN cases are aneuploid, and that DNA ploidy could be an objective prognostic marker.