Condylomatous lesions associated with precancerous changes and carcinomas of the uterine cervix.

The present communication is a comparative survey of the histological specimens derived from the dysplastic or neoplastic lesion of the uterine cervix of 400 women comprising two age-matched series (200 women in each) collected from two Finnish hospitals. Special emphasis was placed on the detection of the newly described condylomatous lesions (flat, inverted, papillomatous) and the possible variations in their biological behavior in the two series. The biological behavior of the condylomatous lesions (the distribution into the three types, their high frequency in young women, and their relationship to different degrees of epithelial atypia) was not significantly different in the two series studied. The main difference between the series was in the frequency of the condylomatous lesions which was markedly higher (p less than 0.005) in the material made up of women in eastern Finland. The results suggest that condylomatous lesions caused by human papilloma virus (HPV) are ubiquitous and characterized by a rather constant biological behavior. The reasons behind the observed local variations in their frequency remain obscure and advocate an epidemiological study combined with virological assays to be done among the patients with precancerous lesions of the uterine cervix to gain further data on the role of HPV in human squamous cell carcinogenesis.