Juvenile and adult laryngeal papillomata: classification by in-sity hybridization for human papillomavirus

We report the application of an in-situ hybridization technique for the demonstration of human papillomavirus (HPV) employing a biotin-streptavidin-polyalkaline phosphatase complex to paraffin processed tissue from a series of patients with laryngeal papillomata. All cases of juvenile papillomata, whether solitary or multiple, proved positive for HPV types 6 and/or type 11. However, only two cases of adult solitary papillomata and five cases of adult multiple papillomata were positive for HPV type 6 and/or type 11. All papillomata were negative for HPV types 16 and 18. Five specimens of normal vocal cord epithelium were uniformly negative for all four HPV types.