Bladder and prostate cancer screening for human papillomavirus by polymerase chain reaction: conflicting results using different annealing temperatures.

Two sets of L1 ORF degenerative primers, GP5/6 and MYO9/11, have been used to screen for human papillomavirus (HPV) sequences in bladder tumours, cell lines and controls by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). None of the 14 bladder and prostate tumours or nine bladder cell lines contained HPV sequences when tested with L1 ORF primer pair GP5/6 at 40 degrees C annealing temperature. In contrast, use of the L1 ORF primer pair MY09/11 at this low annealing temperature consistently gave a 450 bp band, suggesting the presence of HPV. This occurred in all samples including the negative DNA controls. An increase in stringency to an annealing temperature of 55 degrees C resulted in an elimination of this band in the test and negative control samples. This finding may explain why there are contradictory reports in the literature, and further studies are in progress to clarify this issue.