Lack of association between proliferative verrucous leukoplakia and human papillomavirus infection.

Purpose: To analyze proliferative verrucous leukoplakia (PVL) for the presence of human papillomavirus (HPV) in different stages of the disease.
Materials and Methods: We studied 13 patients with PVL. In 10 patients (76.9%), a lesional biopsy was taken and frozen at -40 degrees C. Four patients were instructed to mouth rinse with sterile sera. The biopsy and rinse samples were analyzed for HPV by PCR.
Results: We did not detect HPV infection in the PVL tissue or in the oral rinse of any of the 13 patients in any stage of the disease analyzed, neither in oral squamous cell carcinoma nor in the simple hyperkeratosis.
Conclusion: There was no association between PVL and HPV infection in our patients.