Advances in Dental Research, Vol 7, 207-212, Copyright © 1993 by International & American Associations for Dental Research
New approaches to the diagnosis of oral soft-tissue disease of viral origin
B. Rodu
Department of Oral Pathology, School of Dentistry, University of Alabama at Birmingham 35294.
Molecular biology is changing the face of diagnostic medicine, and
infectious diseases of the oral soft tissues are among the targets of these
advances in biotechnology. As an illustration of these concepts, a
PCR-based detection and typing system for human papillomaviruses (HPVs)
will be discussed. A single "consensus" set of oligomeric nucleotide
primers can be used to amplify a 571- to 594-base-pair region of the E1
open reading frame of HPV 6, 11, 16, and 18. These HPV types are commonly
associated with preneoplastic and cancerous lesions of the genital,
respiratory, and digestive tracts. PCR amplification yields single bands of
similar size for these viruses by agarose gel electrophoresis. Digestion of
the resultant products by the restriction endonuclease AccI yields
distinctive and reproducible banding patterns by polyacrylamide gel
electrophoresis (with ethidium bromide) due to their internal sequence
diversity. The system is sensitive; without radioisotopes, it can detect
and type HPV 18 in as little as 100 pg of DNA from HeLa cells. We have used
it to confirm HPV in fresh-frozen tumors. Computer sequence analysis can be
used to modify the system for the detection of new HPV types as they are
characterized. Other applications of molecular-biology-based detection
systems for infectious diseases of the head and neck region will be
discussed.
