High prevalence of a variety of epidermodysplasia verruciformis-associated human papillomaviruses in psoriatic skin of patients treated or not treated with PUVA.
Epidermodysplasia verruciformis-associated human papillomaviruses and in particular human papillomavirus type 5 were recently shown to be highly prevalent in psoriatic skin. We have analyzed lesional skin from 54 psoriasis patients for infections with genital-specific and epidermodysplasia verruciformis-specific human papillomaviruses to define the spectrum of involved human papillomavirus types and to test if it is influenced by psoralen ultraviolet A therapy. Using polymerase chain reaction analysis we could detect human papillomavirus sequences in skin lesions of 83% of the tested patients. In contrast, human papillomavirus-DNA was only demonstrated in 19% of skin samples from 42 dermatologically healthy, immunocompetent individuals. Sequence analysis of the polymerase chain reaction amplimers revealed 14 human papillomavirus types, all belonging to the epidermodysplasia verruciformis or epidermodysplasia verruciformis-related papillomaviruses. Only in one case we identified sequences related to those of genital viruses, which, however, represented a putatively new human papillomavirus type. The most prevalent human papillomavirus type in our patient series was human papillomavirus type 36, found in 62% of the patients positive for human papillomavirus-DNA, followed by human papillomavirus type 5 (38%) and human papillomavirus type 38 (24%). Multiple infections with two to five different human papillomavirus types could be detected in skin samples of 63% of the analyzed patients. The overall human papillomavirus detection rate did not differ significantly between patients which have been subjected to psoralen ultraviolet A photochemotherapy or solely treated with topical preparations (77 vs 89%). Human papillomavirus type 5, however, could be detected significantly more frequent in lesions of psoralen ultraviolet A-treated patients (p < 0.001). Our data strongly argue for infections with epidermodysplasia verruciformis-specific papillomaviruses being an almost consistent feature of the lesional psoriatic skin and substantiate the importance of further studies to elucidate a possible involvement of human papillomaviruses in psoriasis pathology.
Institut for Virology, University of Cologne, Germany.
S J
SJ
Weissenborn
R
R
Höpfl
F
F
Weber
H
H
Smola
H J
HJ
Pfister
P G
PG
Fuchs
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D001483:Base Sequence; D001706:Biopsy; D004279:DNA, Viral / Q000235:genetics; D004819:Epidermodysplasia Verruciformis / Q000821:virology; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D011701:PUVA Therapy; D027383:Papillomaviridae / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics; D030361:Papillomavirus Infections / Q000188:drug therapy*; D015995:Prevalence; D011565:Psoriasis / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000821:virology; D016415:Sequence Alignment; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D017386:Sequence Homology, Amino Acid; D012689:Sequence Homology, Nucleic Acid; D012867:Skin / Q000473:pathology / Q000821:virology; D017193:Skin Diseases, Viral / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000473:pathology; D014412:Tumor Virus Infections / Q000188:drug therapy*
D004279:DNA, Viral