detection of human papilloma viruses type 16 and 18 by pcr and rflp in paraffin-embedded cervical cancer tissue specimens

human papillomaviruses (hpvs) infect mucosal and cutaneous epithelia and cause malignant and benign neoplastic lesions. human papillomaviruses cause 250000 deaths per year from cervical cancer most often in developing countries. this major public health problem make them important targets in the search for human papillomaviruses detection methods that may play a role in cervical cancer screening.   in the present study, we used a combination of polymerase chain reaction (pcr) amplification method and restriction fragment length polymorphism (rflp) analysis in order to identify hpv types in cervical cancer samples. two of the five samples were hpv positive that one of them was hpv16 positive and the other was positive for hpv18. the method could facilitate the sensitive identification of a broad spectrum of genital human papillomaviruses.