Review: Antibodies to cutaneous human papillomaviruses

Human papillomaviruses (HPVs) are small double-stranded DNA viruses that infect the epithelia of skin or mucosa. Cutaneous HPV is ubiquitous and many children have skin warts at some stage during childhood and a high proportion of the adult population have asymptomatic skin HPV infections. While a subset of mucosal HPV types are involved in cervical cancer, the role for cutaneous HPV types in skin cancer is still under debate. There is some evidence that the skin HPV types have mechanisms to induce skin cancer, but the role of HPV infection has never been proved in larger epidemiological studies and is not well understood. Cutaneous HPV serology has been employed more commonly during the last decade to help find a link between cutaneous HPV and skin cancer. This review covers the findings from cutaneous HPV serology studies published during the last decade and discusses differences in seroprevalence and risk factors. J. Med. Virol. 84:814822, 2012. (C) 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.