There are more supports for the view that human papillomavirus (HPV) infection might be an etiological factor in the development of cervical cancer when the association of persistent condylomata is considered. Biopsies from 318 cases with squamous cell carcinoma of uterine cervix, 48 with cervical and vulvar condylomata, 14 with cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN), 34 with chronic cervicitis and 24 normal cervical epithelium were collected from 5 geographic regions of China with different cervical cancer mortalities. All specimens were prepared for Dot blot, Southern blot and in situ DNA-DNA hybridizations by using HPV-11, 16, 18 DNA labelled with 32P and 3H as probes to detect viral homologous sequences in samples. Among them, 32 cases with cervical cancer, 27 with condyloma and 10 normal cervical epitheliums were randomly chosen for comparative EM observation. The results showed that: 1), 192 out of 318 (60.4%) cases of cervical cancer were positive for HPV-16 DNA probe (Table I)
